Capitol Punishment
by alyssss
Summary: Peeta's experience from the end of Catching Fire through to (possibly) the end of Mockingjay and (maybe) beyond. Things to be wary of throughout this story would be violence, description of injury and strong language.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1 (End of Catching Fire)**

"Katniss? Katniss!" My throat raw from shouting, my mouth dry with panic. Where is she?

"Peeta?" Oh thank goodness, she's alive… but where? I start running back through the forest, as fast as my artificial leg will carry me. I must find her before the lightning hits the tree. Stumbling back into the lightning zone, I curse whoever it was who cut the wire, my mind too overwhelmed with Katniss' voice as she calls out my name to think back to who it might have been. Johanna sprints past in the opposite direction, her hands covered in blood that is not her own. What has she done? Chaff tumbles down the hill in front of me, slipping on some wet leaves and rolling down another few feet until he hits a tree.

Panting, he struggles to get to his feet as Brutus comes barrelling down the hill after him, a long knife clutched in his hand. Brutus slashes out with the knife and Chaff falls down again, blood spurting up the trunk of the tree behind him. He stabs, and Chaff falls still- then he turns to face me. I draw my own knife from my belt and run at him screaming, plunging the blade into his gut before he has chance to think. Leaving my knife buried deep in his bulging stomach, I run onwards to find Katniss, desperation haunting me as time ticks onwards.

The earth explodes, bursting into flames. Dirt and plants rain down around me, the electricity travelling through the ground hitting my body and making my hair stand on end. As I fall to the floor I continue to shout out for Katniss, but my ears are screaming and I can't feel anything except pain- I don't know whether any noise is coming out at all or if it's hidden by the sound of explosions still going off in the forest. My ears still ringing, my head heavy, I try and push myself up, but my body is frozen again. I am trapped.

I still shout for Katniss, but I'm not sure if I'm even trying to say it or if it's all in my head. Either way, her name is the only word my mind knows.The sky too bursts into flames, more explosions and smoke filling the air. Sparks from the fireworks blossoming above me fall to the ground around my head, hot ashes landing on my wetsuit and burning holes in the already shredded material. Why are they setting off fireworks? Are we all dead? Have they killed Katniss? Or are they just trying to cover up the fact our plan destroyed the arena?

A hovercraft appears above me, blocking out the fireworks. A claw slides under my limp body and carries my skywards, but I'm not dead. Am I the last one alive, the victor of the games yet again, but without Katniss at my side? Something in the back of my mind leaps forward again, something from the Quarter Quell announcement, _"… a reminder to the rebels that even the strongest among them cannot overcome the power of the capitol…"_ Of course, they never intended to have a victor. I suppose that's just as well that it's ending this way because if it wasn't then we'd all come to a bloody and painful end, like Wiress and Brutus and Mags.

As I rise, my head flops to one side and I see another hovercraft not too far away, lifting another tribute from the arena. Her head hangs off the edge of the claw, a long brown braid trailing behind her. Katniss. Even from this distance I can see that her eyes are wide open, her entire body unmoving.

My heart falls through my body, out of the claw and lands in the burning forest below as realisation sets in. All this for nothing. All my sacrifices for what? Katniss to end up getting killed in Beetee's stupid plan. Why didn't we take off while we had the chance, escape from the alliance while we could?

I enter the hovercraft and the claw drops me roughly onto the floor, then is lowered back outside to fetch someone else. The face of President Snow materialises over me as I lie motionless on the floor, paralysed by shock. I curse inwardly- it must be serious if Snow himself is here instead of Plutarch. President Snow winks down at me and rests his fingers on my eyelids, pulling them closed over my still-seeing eyes.

Rough hands take hold of me and lift me from the floor, placing me on a not-much-comfier bed which is more like a table on wheels, and jabbing me in the arm with something sharp. The sounds around me go fuzzy and fade as I lose consciousness, the pain vanishing as I fall farther away from reality.

When I wake, I am strapped to a slightly more comfortable bed in a gleaming white hospital room. My body no longer aches and is devoid of scars. I panic as I feel the tightness of the rough fabric straps holding me down, feel the familiar itch of tubes sticking into various parts of my recovering body. I look around for Katniss, looking closely at the two unconscious figures in the other beds- the first I recognise as Johanna, her tanned skin pale and her hair hanging limp beside her far-too-aged looking face. Enobaria occupies the other bed, looking mostly fine but for the usual cuts and scrapes people obtain in the arena. There is one other bed in the room, across from me. It's empty.

My heart aches as I realise Katniss is not here, as I consider again the likelihood of her death. Tears prick at my eyes and I can't wipe them away. They trickle down the sides of my face, salty waterfalls of sorrow forming pools on the flat pillow under my head.

Snow enters the room and leans against the end of my bed, his back to me. I spit at his back before he can turn around, and hit him directly in-between the shoulder blades. He rests his hands on the white metal bar at my feet and talks, mostly to himself but also to me.

"You'll be pleased to know that Katniss Everdeen is alive… just about. Of course even in her declining mental state and with her inherent lack of physical strength, she has already managed to cause trouble. You might be interested to know that your… fiancé… is now with the rebels, plotting against us here in the Capitol and prepared to do whatever it takes to get her way. In fact, by destroying the force field in the arena in order to save herself, she has not only landed you here… which will prove invaluable… but also caused the bombing and complete destruction of District 12." My mind is numb, barely understanding what he tells me. I can't form a reaction to what he says but he doesn't seem too bothered, merely telling me to get some rest before he leaves the room as silently as he entered it.

I am determined that Snow is wrong, that the destruction of 12 is not Katniss' fault. Satisfied that she is alive, my mind focusses on what he said about me being invaluable as the drowsiness returns and I drift back away from the land of the living.


	2. Chapter 2

A peacekeeper flicks the 'on' switch on the side of a small flat screen television positioned at the end of my bed. A recording flickers on showing Katniss running around the arena shouting for me, screaming my name over and over. Blood spurts out from a deep cut in her arm as she stumbles back up the hill towards the lightning tree, following the wire.

She takes the end, confused, trying to figure out how Beetee's plan works. You can see her struggling to decide as the seconds tick away, vital time before the lightning strikes. She shoots an arrow with the wire tied around it at the force field. The lightning hits the wire and it goes live a split second before it hits the barrier. The forest explodes in clouds of dirt and Katniss falls down, paralysed.

Another recording, a news report with a background I've seen time and time again- talking about the destruction of 13, the radiation still around there. The smoke still rising in plumes from the rubble, all that remains of the District. "That's where Miss Everdeen is." Snow says over the reporter's radiation-suit-muffled report. How can she be there, if it's so dangerous? "The whole district is underground. We leave it alone, don't interfere. As long as we leave it, they leave us in peace."

And then another recording, fire dropping onto 12- destroying the houses. Gale leading families away from town- to the meadow. More fire drops towards the fleeing crowd. Fireballs drop onto the town square- our bakery bursts into flames. People run out of the buildings screaming and roll in the streets- the fire is not extinguished but clings to their clothes like water- they fall still, dead.

A wave of fire rips through the seam and devours everyone in its path- one moment a person is there and then once the wave has passed they are nothing but ashes and a few bones- sickness rises from my stomach, fear and disgust fills my lungs. Snow flicks the off switch on the TV and tells me again that it is all Katniss' fault.

The next thing he tells me, I don't want to hear. I am totally unprepared to hear him speak the words, even though somewhere deep inside me I already know it. "Your parents perished in the fire, Peeta."

I shake my head rapidly, saying "No" over and over again. Tears prick at my eyes, my breath catches in my throat. Snow's stern face shows no sign of relenting, of lightening up and I know he's telling the truth. "No!" I shout it now, grief wracking my body. More feelings that I ever thought it would be possible to experience well up inside of me and burst out of my body in huge sobs. I scream it now, over and over again. Enobaria gives me a dirty look as I clutch at my hair, almost ripping it out of my scalp. Hunched over on the bed, I rock back and forth, crying and clawing at the sheets until something sharp stabs me in the arm and I collapse, landing with a hard thud on the linoleum hospital floor.

When I wake again, I am trapped in a small white room, dimly lit with a flickering bulb set in the ceiling. Floor, walls and ceiling are all covered in identical white tiles, each one a perfect square. There is a toilet bowl against the wall that has the door in, a pipe leading straight down into the floor. Against one of the walls is a narrow cot, nothing more than a sheet of material stretched over a metal frame. I shift myself from my current position- lying spread eagled on the tiled floor, and slump against one of the walls.

Why did you blow up the Arena Katniss? It's your fault all of this happened, your fault my parents are dead_. I hope you're having fun in 13 Katniss, because I'm having a blast here_. More tears leak from my eyes as I bite my lip and think about her, the softness of her braid and the silver rings around her pupils. A pack of cards lies on the floor in the corner, barely visible in the dull light. Crawling over to them, I pick them up and then lie on my back in the middle of the room, spread eagled again.

Removing the cards from the battered box, I bend them in my hands until, desperate to escape they fly off, scattering over the floor. The light blinks off and I feel my away across the floor to the cot. The material sags in the middle as I lower myself onto it and curl up, hugging my knees to my chest. A low moan escapes from my mouth as I think about Katniss, where she is right now and if she's thinking about me like I'm thinking about her, if she wants to feel my hand in hers and feel my lips against her cheek. At this time, I wouldn't even say no to the comfort of my mother's bulk, her arms wrapped around me as she reads me bedtime stories or my father's warm chuckle as he throws scraps to the pigs in the evening. I squeeze my eyes shut, blocking out the impenetrable darkness, and wait for sleep to take me away.


	3. Chapter 3

I am strapped to a wooden seat in a larger tiled room, my wrists and ankles secured to the arms and legs of the chair. Snow gives instructions to the surrounding Peacekeepers not to scar me- apparently I need to be looking _picture perfect_ for 'future plans'. I realise what's happening and fight against the restraints in a vain attempt to escape. Snow laughs heartily and shoots the Peacekeepers a meaningful look, then walks out of the door, locking it behind him.

The Peacekeepers approach- one of them, the taller of the two says, "In the old days, for this kind of stuff, they tended to have a thing called 'good cop, bad cop'. I'm the bad cop- and so is he, so you better spill." Screams come from another room close by and the Peacekeepers chuckle nervously. "Comply with us, answer the questions we ask you- _truthfully_- and we can guarantee that you won't be making those kinds of noises.

The shorter man steps forward. "Do you really love Katniss?"

"Yes."

"Do you understand that it's her fault you're here?"

"A little…"

"What do you know of the plan to bust her out of the arena?"

"The what?"

"What role does she play?"

"I don't…"

"Why is she so important to the rebels?"

For this I have no answer, I just sit in silence and drop my head. "So, you love her?" The taller man shoves the smaller one out of the way and puts his arms on my chair, leaning right into my face. "It's her fault you almost died in the arena. In fact, I'd be willing to bet that she wouldn't even care if you died. It would have been better off for both of you if you'd both died in the arena first time around… or you could have just killed her and got it over with. Plenty of girls want a victor… "

"So tell me, pretty boy. What do you know, of the plan to bust her out of the arena? What was _your_ role?"

"Plan? What _plan_?" I scream back at him, throwing my body forward and thrusting my face into his. "I never get told anything. I'm the baker's son. My own parents were more confident in Katniss than they were in me. Nobody trusts me enough to tell me anything, _because I'm just a baker._"

"See, if you'd told us that in the first place we wouldn't have had to do this…" The Peacekeeper walks away a step and then whips round, bringing his knee up and hitting me in the crotch. I scream out in pain and hunch over myself on the chair, hissing as I take forced breaths through my teeth, seething with the unfairness of it all. "Why is she so important to the rebels? Why did District 13 go through all the effort of saving her when they could have just let her die?"

"I…" He brings his knee up again and presses it against my already throbbing groin, applying more pressure the more I hesitate. I try and stall for as long as possible but before long he has almost his whole body weight pressed down on me, crushing me. "I don't know! Maybe she is… something special to them I don't…" I gasp for breath, almost sobbing at the pain. He removes his knee and stands up straight, waiting for me to answer. "Maybe they want her for her skills with a bow and arrow?" I say weakly, still bent over in agony. "Or maybe she… maybe they think she can be the face of their rebellion or something."

This answer seems to be good enough for them and I instantly regret saying it because it's probably true. They loosen the straps on the chair and force me to my feet, dragging me from the room. There is a puddle of water on the floor that has seeped out from under the door directly across the hall. The Peacekeepers grin at eachother as they drag me up the maze of corridors and throw me head first into my room. Tears seep from my eyes and dampen the tiles beneath my face. When I roll over, I notice a bowl, a roll of bread and cup of water sitting just inside the door. A meagre reward in exchange for information that may or may not be true.

The bread is rough when I rip it open, several days old but not mouldy. It's made from better grain than we get in the Districts- nice to know that even murderous freaks still treat their prisoners to quality food- even if it is a few says old. The bowl holds some watery lukewarm soup. I dip the bread in and suck the broth out, chewing on the tough crust and feeling the soggy innards disintegrate on my tongue.

I wash my soup down with the water and leave the dishes where I found them, crawling back over to the cot. The cards still litter the floor and I can think of nothing better to do than pick them up and try building a house of cards. The floor is too slippy for the cards to stand up so I rest them in the gaps between the tiles and eventually manage to build one of substantial height. I get to my feet and bring my leg back, swinging it around to kick the cards as hard as I can. They flutter to the floor and I flop back down onto the cot, sitting down just as the bulb blinks out.


	4. Chapter 4

When I wake up and roll onto my side, the first thought to enter my mind is her name. It's like a scream, blaring from every single one of those stupid white tiles. What is she doing? Is she even still alive? This is my routine now. Wake up, think about Katniss, panic, roll over and go back to sleep. Only this morning, I throw my legs over the side of the bed and stand up tall, stretching out my aches and pains and massaging those tender spots that they insist on torturing. My dignity escapes me when the peacekeepers march in as I'm perched on the toilet, counting the tiles on the opposite wall and pondering my existence.

I don't even have time to pull up my trousers before they start to drag me down the corridor and into a lift. Inside, they relinquish their hold just long enough for me to pull my joggers up to my waist, and then the doors slide open again and we step into a long white corridor, still underground. They push me into another tiled room to the side with a long table and a chair. There's a shower cubicle in the corner and a mirror along one of the shorter walls. A plain door on the other side and an identical one behind me, which swings shut and locks as the peacekeepers leave the room.

I take hesitant steps across the room, the tiled floor slightly warmer under my feet than the one in my cell. Two stylists step in from the other room and watch me as I step up to the mirror and examine my face. Slightly grey skin, my greasy hair sticking up in all directions. I've lost weight, not showered in weeks. There's still dirt on my skin from the arena. Despite all of this though, I'm looking well. Alive. My eyes glitter under the harsh lights.

"Please, in the shower." The male stylist commands in his affected Capitol accent.

"Where's Portia?" I ask out loud as I strip off my clothes and step into the cubicle. Hot water, a trickle at first but soon a steaming waterfall, cascades from the nozzle above my head. Nobody answers my question. This shower is nothing compared to the one I remember from the tribute centre. It's not even close to the one back home in the Victor's Village back in District 12. "Cinna?"

Still without an answer, I grab the slippery bar of soap from the shelf affixed to the wall and rub it over my body, scrubbing it through my hair and over my face. The tiles beneath my feet become slippery with soap and water as I turn in the stream, letting the droplets roll down my body and into the drain at my feet. When I step out, the female stylist hands me a towel and guides me over to a chair.

My dignity already lost from the walk from my cell, I dry myself off and sit down in the leather recliner. My damp skin automatically sticks to the material, sticky and uncomfortable. The woman trims and styles my hair as I feast upon my reflection, my skin glowing red from the heat of the shower. Together, the stylists tut over my bruised body and help me into a pristine black suit, then slather handfuls of almost orange cream over my face. They almost throw me into the next room along, and leave through the door leading out into the corridor.

This next room has lush green walls and two low black couches, with President Snow sitting on one of them. He motions to the other and I sit stiffly, my hands gripping my knees, my back avoiding the back of the couch as though it were electrocuted. Snow smiles and pours me a glass of water from a jug on the back glass coffee table between us. I take it from him and drain it in one gulp, suddenly feeling very relaxed, suddenly okay with everything.

"Mr Mellark. I thank you very much for your co-operation these past few days, but now I must ask that you continue to support me, and that you express this support in front of the entire nation." I squirm slightly, but the feeling of discomfort is immediately suppressed by something else, suffocated with a feather pillow. "We are going to film an interview and broadcast it live to the nation, but you shouldn't worry too much. Just be your usual light-hearted self. Of course, the only reason you aren't out there talking right now is that I need to make sure you behave yourself out there. It's quite possible- indeed probable- that our enemies will be watching this broadcast. It is as a result of this that I ask you, quite simply, to do this one thing. Whatever you do, whatever it is you choose to talk about, you say nothing about your time here. What you must discuss is war, and how we as a nation are heading towards this. You must- I cannot stress this enough- remind District 13 that we just want peace. That war would mean the end of everything and everyone."

I open my mouth to speak but find myself just nodding along to what he says, my eyes blank, almost unseeing. He helps me to my feet and rests his hand on the small of my back as he guides me through the other door and into the ever familiar TV studio. Caesar shakes my hand, a solemn look in his eye, and guides me on stage to the same set up as last time. Two white chairs, the white lights glaring down on us from above. Snow takes one of the seats that usual hold the audience, but today they are empty. He sits right at the front, behind the main camera. I sit up straight, cross my legs and look meaningfully at Caesar, wondering how it all came to this. The red light of the camera blinks on, and the interview begins.

When we talk, all I can think is that somewhere out there, Katniss is watching me. She can see me, right now, as the bright lights shine down on me and set my orange skin glowing. I wonder what she is thinking. My trouser leg is up around the ankle of my prosthetic leg, which wiggles in place, loose after so much weight lost.

Caesar wiggles about a little, then crosses his legs the opposite way to mine and entwines his fingers in his lap. He looks up at me and tilts his head to one side, a little like a lost puppy. "So… Peeta… welcome back."


	5. Chapter 5

I sit still, smiling slightly, terrified of what might happen if I say something wrong.  
>Remembering my face is being broadcast across the nation, I change my smile to one a little brighter, welcoming and normal. A false smile from beneath all the worry. There's something about the glint of Snow's eyes watching me that makes my spine stiffen, straighten up.<p>

"I bet you thought you'd done your last interview with me, Caesar." My voice is husky, my throat sore from screaming and shouting, my voice strange after weeks of disuse.

"I confess, I did," says Caesar. "The night before the Quarter Quell… well, who ever thought we'd see you again?"

My stomach drops as I remember my determination this time, my willingness to die in order to let Katniss survive. Why didn't she just let me die? I wouldn't be here if she had, that's for sure. I frown. "It wasn't part of my plan, that's for sure."

"I think it was clear to all of us what your plan was. To sacrifice yourself in the arena so that Katniss and your child could survive."

My eyes drop with guilt- I had almost forgotten. Of course, she is supposed to be pregnant with my child. That would never happen, regardless of how I want it to. She loves Gale, and that's highly unlikely to ever change. Besides, I'm probably as good as dead to her now, seeing as I'm fraternizing with the enemy.

"That was it. Clear and simple." Two lives for the price of one. I trace patterns on my knees with my forefinger, avoiding eye contact. "But other people had plans as well."

I start thinking about how Haymitch betrayed me, how he betrayed of all the other tributes. How even Katniss, who claims to know nothing, could have been in on it. My eyebrows come closer together as I consider it, and I have to concentrate to relax my face. To untense each individual muscle, prevent the inner conflict within my heart from showing on my face. These plans that I didn't know of- and thankfully too, or I could be feeling a lot worse than I am now.

"Why don't you tell us about that last night in the arena? Help us sort a few things out."  
>I nod, speaking slowly as I struggle to remember, struggle to put my words into some kind of order. It's just so important to get these words right.<p>

"That last night… to tell you about that last night…. Well, first of all, you have to imagine how it felt in the arena. It was like being an insect trapped under a bowl filled with steaming air. And all around you, jungle… green and alive and ticking. That giant clock ticking away your life. Every hour promising some new horror. You have to imagine that in the last two days, sixteen people have died- some of them defending you. At the rate things are going, the last eight will be dead by morning. Save one. The victor. And your plan is that it won't be you. Once you're in the arena, the rest of the world becomes very distant," I cough and push myself up on the chair, finally looking Caesar in the eye. "All the people and things you loved or cared about almost cease to exist. The pink sky and the monsters in the jungle and the tributes who want your blood become your final reality, the only one that ever mattered. As bad as it makes you feel, you're going to have to do some killing, because in the arena, you only get one wish. And it's very costly." Just thinking about the arena, all that it meant, everything that happened. It takes me back 75 years. How many children have been slaughtered by the Capitol?

"It costs your life."

I shake my head, gripping the edge of the plastic seat with my fingers. "Oh, no. It costs a lot more than your life. To murder innocent people? It costs everything you are." It takes a whole lot of effort to keep the trembling tone from my voice, because it's true.

"Everything you are."

The room is silent but for my own breath, my own beating heart. I can almost feel the whole of Panem fall silent with intrigue. This, I realise, is the first time anyone has ever spoken about what the arena is actually like. This is something none of them, except the remaining victors, have ever experienced. None of these people have ever even heard about what it's like in there. It's as though the rebellions across the country have even stopped, the rebels paused to draw breath and listen to what I have to say. I know they haven't, but the atmosphere is so thick it's almost as if the world itself has stopped turning.

"So you hold on to your wish, because that's all you have. And that last night, yes, my wish was to save Katniss. But even without knowing about the rebels, it didn't feel right. Everything was too complicated. I found myself regretting I hadn't run off with her earlier in the day, as she had suggested. But there was no getting out of it at that point."

"You were too caught up in Beetee's plan to electrify the salt lake."

"Too busy playing allies with the others. I should have never let them separate us!" I burst out, very loud, louder than I thought. My body begins to shake. "That's when I lost her." I stop shaking, and with my control regained I drop my head and look down at the glittering tiles beneath my feet. Some are black with rainbow flecks within them, reflecting my face back at me. The rest are white, catching the light and sending it back up into my face.

"When you stayed at the lightning tree, and she and Johanna Mason took the coil of wire down to the water."

"I didn't want to!" I raise my head again, eyes wide. My cheeks burn red with frustration. I can almost feel the angry red shining through the makeup. "But I couldn't argue with Beetee without indicating we were about to break away from the alliance. When that wire was cut, everything just went insane. I can only remember bits and pieces. Trying to find her. Watching Brutus kill Chaff. Killing Brutus myself. I know she was calling my name. I heard her. Then the lightning bolt hit the tree, and the force field around the arena… blew out."

"Katniss blew it out, Peeta. You've seen the footage." Caesar leans forward, inclining his head slightly and moving his hands from the arms of the chair to rest on his knees. His sudden proximity hits me and I have to lean back a few centimeters to breathe. This feels like an interrogation, with only the good-cop turned bad.

"She didn't know what she was doing. None of us could follow Beetee's plan. You can see her trying to figure out what to do with that wire." I snap, rage boiling inside. Upset at being forced to think about Katniss and her betrayal, betrayed by Snow. This wasn't the plan! I feel tears welling up under my eyes and have to choke back angry sobs.

"All right. It just looks suspicious, as If she was part of the rebels' plan all along."

I jump to my feet, putting my hands on the arms of Caesar's chair and leaning into his face.  
>"Really? And was it part of her plan for Johanna to nearly kill her? For that electric shock to paralyse her? To trigger the bombing?" Determined to get my point across, I start yelling. "She didn't know, Caesar! Neither of us knew anything except that we were trying to keep each other alive!" My hands are above my head, my weight resting on my real leg, my face contorted in all sorts of shapes.<p>

All of my doubts vanish as I remember things how they truly were. I am suddenly overwhelmed with just wanting to hold her and be by her side. I lose all of my fight as Caesar places his hand on my chest and pushes me back down into my seat. I run hands through my hair, distraught. Katniss. I miss her hair tickling against my skin, I miss her grey eyes shining at me through the gloom of the bedroom, her arms wrapped around me beneath the silky sheets.

"What about your mentor, Haymitch Abernathy?"  
>My face hardens, and I drop my hands from my hair and put them back on the arms of the chair. I watch my knuckles whiten as I increase their grip. "I don't know what Haymitch knew." I can't look Caesar in the eye. It's all I can do to stay sitting, keep firmly planted to the chair. "Could he have been part of the conspiracy?"<p>

"He never mentioned it." I relaxes a little and cross my legs again. My trouser leg comes up a little, revealing the silver prosthetic again, more obvious to the camera now. Good. Let them see what they've done to me.

"What does your heart tell you?"

"That I shouldn't have trusted him, that's all." My muscles tense again, I close my eyes and try to relax, tired of these constant spasms. Stress.

Caesar rests his hand on my shoulder, his face soft. "We can stop now if you like."

"Was there more to answer?" I raise my eyebrow, ready for anything he has to throw at me. I can handle it now.

"I was going to ask your thoughts on the war, but if you're too upset…"

"Oh, I'm not too upset to answer that." And I'm right, I know I am. I take a deep breath, swiveling around on my seat to look directly into the camera. The light flashes again. Another minute ticking by. "I want everyone watching, whether you're on the Capitol or rebel side- to stop for just a moment and think about what this war could mean. For human beings. We almost went extinct fighting one another before. Now our numbers are even fewer. Our conditions more tenuous. Is this really what we want to do? Kill ourselves off completely? In the hopes that- what? Some decent species will inherit the smoking remains of the earth?"

"I don't really… I'm not sure I'm following…"

"We can't fight one another Caesar. There won't be enough of us left to keep going. If everybody doesn't lay down their weapons- and I mean, as in _very soon_- it's all over, anyway."

"So… you're calling for a cease-fire?"

"Yes. I'm calling for a cease-fire." Now tired of answering questions, I let out a deep, exasperated sigh. I contemplate just getting up and walking out, like Katniss did, but I don't. I stick it out, just for these last few seconds. I keep my nerve.

"All right. I think that wraps it up. So back to our regularly scheduled programming." The light on the camera blinks off but Snow is nowhere to be seen.

The peacekeepers return, but I storm off stage without them, back through the greenroom to the prep suite. I strip off my shirt and run my head under the shower to scrub off the makeup, wiping the orange residue onto the damp white towel from earlier. I pull my usual joggers and tshirt- though now clean- back on and follow the waiting peacekeepers back to my cell. I sit down on my bed and stare up at the wall, counting the tiles yet again. The pack of cards lies untouched on the floor.

In occurs to me to answer that question, the one I asked myself while answering Caesar's questions. Just how many children have died in the games alone? I work it out, breaking down the numbers in my head. 73 by 23 is 1679, and that figure enough chills me to my bones. I keep working it out though. Add 22- that's 1701, add 47 to get 1748. Thats all the games up to ours, plus the extra kids in Haymitch's games and minus me if we count Katniss as the Victor in our games. 1748 kids killed in the games alone- and then how many in accidents, from starvation or flu or measles or other illnesses the Capitol failed to cure.

It sickens me.


	6. Chapter 6

News reaches the Capitol that instead of lying low, Katniss has agreed to be the Mockingjay. Instead of sitting in my cell all day counting tiles and fiddling with this pack of cards, I am is taken to be tortured.

First thing in the morning I am marched, handcuffed, to a room similar to the questioning one. I am again strapped into a chair but this time, my head is secured to the back of it.

A needle connected to a thin tube is inserted in my arm, clear liquid sitting in it, ready to be transferred to his bloodstream. A numbness spreads up and down my arm and throughout my whole body.

My eyes are stuck open with tape and it's only a few seconds before they start to dry out and water, so that tears are already streaming down my cheeks as the lights dim and videos of Katniss begin to play.

I am confused for a while and then my arm start to itch, the liquid being forced into my veins.

I listen to the voice narrating over gory footage and watch the videos more intensely.

I start to believe what the voice is telling me.

The videos are real.

I start to hate Katniss, fighting at the bindings to lash out at her.

I want to kill her.

Now.

Videos show Katniss in the cave, kissing me and then receiving a parachute.

She is _using me_, she used me for food.

She used me to enable herself to survive.

My head buzzes as I watch a clip of Katniss dropping the tracker jacker nest on me, my vision blurs red with anger as she drugs me and sneaks out of the cave, then comes back and stabs me in the leg as she collapses on top of me.

She just wanted to hurt me.

And when it was announced that there could be two victors, she sought my help.

She used me.

Instead of feeling love and adoration for her, I am so enraged.

I just want to wrap my hands around her throat and squeeze until her eyes bulge out.

It's her fault I'm here.

If she'd let me die in that arena I wouldn't be stuck here.

Why does she have to be so selfish?!

My eyes sting as I fights the venom to retain any happy memory of Katniss, anything good about her- but the venom dripping in my arm twists each new memory to make it bad.

The lights turn back on and the video fades. My body goes limp as a peacekeeper jabs me in the back, unfastens the straps holding me to the chair and pulls the needle from my arm.

I am taken back to my room, being dragged more than walking, and am thrown headfirst through the door.

When everything wears off, I am still lying face down on the cold tiles, my eyes stinging and my face stained with tears.

I vow and promise myself that no more tears will be spilt over Katniss Everdeen.


	7. Chapter 7

Every day they do this, but I won't let them break me. In my mind I hope that someday they will use too much venom and end up killing me- see how Snow would cope without his number one slave. The thought of suicide is tempting- numerous times I remove the sheet from my bed and twist it into a rope, tying it into a loop and hanging it from the light fixture- but something stops me every time. Since 'treatment' began, I've been moved into a better room, with a proper desk and all the paper I could ever want for, with an actual chair and a television screen screwed to the wall.

Katniss. How would she feel if she discovered I'd hung myself? How would she cope without me? Those tracker-jacker-induced thoughts spike through my brain, shouting things like "She doesn't love you!" and "She has Gale!" I shake my head and clamp my hands over my ears to try and block them out, scrunching my face in frustration. Katniss. I have to hold on, for her. But there's a voice in the back of my head that retaliates against everything my conscious has to say. "She doesn't need you." "She doesn't want you."

The TV flickers in background, a new broadcast- something I've not seen before. Showing the bombing in 8, the warehouses going up in flames, bits of rubble raining down. Showing a hospital exploding, the magnified screams, but also shows the planes falling and crashing. The camera finds people stood on roof of warehouse- a tall woman with a gun and two soldiers with bows- they could only be 2 people- Gale and Katniss. My heart leaps as I see Katniss, strong and able and fighting against the Capitol. The screen flickers back to the usual broadcast and I turn back to the desk, picking up my pen and paper again and continuing to draw.

The flowing strands of hair flying away from her braid, her slightly hollow cheeks and prominent cheekbones. The point of her chin and gentle curve of her nose, her shimmering grey eyes. A hundred Katniss' watch me from the desk, her face drawn on every piece of paper handed to me by the Capitol.

The TV flickers again, the seal of District Thirteen appearing on screen. I leap from my chair and fall in my haste to reach the TV. The screen goes black as I hastily press the tiny black volume button beside the screen, turning it up as loud as it will go. A tiny light appears in the centre of the screen and expands, a flame licking at the glass until the TV shows nothing but a raging fire. I almost expect the flames to erupt outwards, to lick over the black plastic frame surrounding the screen and climb the walls. A mockingjay pin appears in the centre, spinning, the flames reflecting off the gold. A male voice starts speaking over the image and I recognise it instantly- Claudius Templesmith.

"Katniss Everdeen, the girl who was on fire, burns on." The mockingjay fades out and there is Katniss, standing amongst the flames. Her hair ripples in a slight breeze, and I realise that the flames behind her are real, the smoking wreckage of district 8.

"I want to tell the rebels that I am alive." My blood chills as It runs through my veins, ice spiking its way through my heart. A mix of hatred and utter adoration fills my body and I rock back and forth, confused. "That I'm right here in District Eight, Where the Capitol has just bombed a hospital full of unarmed men, women and children. There will be no survivors."

I feel vomit rising up inside of me as the screen shows the hospital collapsing, the desperation of the onlookers as Katniss continues to speak. "I want to tell people that is you think for one second the Capitol will treat us fairly if there's a ceasefire, you're deluding yourself. Because you know who they are and what they do." My face is pressed right up against the screen, my fingers tracing her scarred face as it flashes back onto the screen.

"_This_ is what they do! And we must fight back!" A montage of the battle, close ups of Katniss as she fires arrow after arrow at the oncoming waves of hovercraft. A close up of a new wound sustained from a bomb blast, looking bloody and painful, but still she soldiers onwards. My Katniss, always strong, determined as ever.

A fresh wave of hate rolls over me, happiness at seeing her hurt. It passes, Katniss is back on the screen, just standing there and speaking. And I want her. "President Snow says he's sending us a message? Well I have one for him. You can torture us and bomb us and burn our districts to the ground, but do you see that?" A plane, burning on the roof of a collapsing warehouse. Katniss's face is back, even closer than ever. I rest my forehead against hers as she shouts into my ears. "Fire is catching! And if we burn, you burn with us!"

Flames swallow her up and take her away from me, black letters spelling out her last lines. The words catch fire and the door to my room swings open, Peacekeepers march in and grab me by the arms, dragging me from the room once again, for yet another round of tracker jacker torture. I want to sob as they pull me through the maze of corridors, back to the room. The TV is still set up from this morning, the propo aired by Thirteen already playing on repeat. They pin my arms and legs down as I fight against them and they fasten me to the chair, this time affixing an extra strap around my forehead to keep my eyes focused on the screen. They stab my arm with a needle again just as Katniss appears on screen, the buildings crumbling behind her.

And it's not just the poison shooting through my veins that hurts. As I am forced to watch the propos, Peacekeepers jab me in the sides with the butts of their guns and punch me with fists of iron. When their hands collide with my body they hit whatever fat remains, the muscle being eaten away first as the Capitol starves me. As they hit me and kick at me, they shout taunts down my ears. "This is from Katniss." "Katniss hates you." "She ordered this." "She thinks you deserve it."

I fight against the venom and the pain, struggling to think happy thoughts about Katniss, to continue to love her. Once the venom wears off I am myself again, defeated and tired from the fighting, my mind flooded with sadness. I am going to lose her, my Katniss.


	8. Chapter 8

More propos show, breaking through the system into the Capitol showings. I'd have thought that in the Capitol they'd show something other than these broadcasts, and they probably do- but not to their prisoners. We must continue to be absorbed by the propaganda, brainwashed in the same way as all of those people in the districts.

The propo- Katniss walking around the hospital in 8, repulsed by the sights she sees like when she nursed my leg. Midway through an interview with Gale, Peacekeepers burst into my room and grab me by the arms, carrying me as they sprint through the maze of tunnels. I don't fight back this time- it's almost expected that I'll be tortured everytime a propo from 13 airs on my TV. But this time we take a different turning, into a waiting lift and to the prep room.

The team rub dry shampoo into my hair and gel it back, rub my body down with damp cloths and dry me off with a towel. They shove me roughly into a suit again and brush a layer of powder over my face, and before I know it I've been shoved into the studio and pushed roughly onto the chair beside Caesar. "Five…" I don't even know what this is. "Four…" What am I doing here? "Three…" Will Katniss be watching? "Two…" Is this _because_ of Katniss? "One..." I shift my hands in my lap and focus my eyes on the floor as the red light on the camera blinks on.

My hands shake and sweat instantly begins to pour from my skin, beading in little pools under the hot lights. I am all-too conscious of the dark circles under my eyes, illuminated by the white tiles under my feet. Every time I have caught sight of my reflection over the past few days it has gotten worse, more bedraggled and desperate. And now the whole of Panem is seeing me for what I am- a weakling.

Pain stabs at my sides as I move, the bruises from being beaten up by Peacekeepers still sensitive. I suppress a moan as Caesar starts talking, only half listening to what he is saying. "What do you think of the rumours that Katniss is taping propos for the districts?"

Oh crap. My TV being wired up to receive what the districts receive means that I've seen these, and the fact I've been shown the propos in tracker jacker sessions shows the Capitol know they exist. Why are they even asking me about it? I don't know how to respond, how to react. My words catch on the edge of my tongue, refusing to pass my parted lips. Gulping air and non-existent saliva, I manage to choke out a hoarse response.

"They're using her, obviously. To whip up the rebels. I doubt she even knows what's going on in the war. What's at stake."

"Is there anything you'd like to tell her?"

So many things. I love you Katniss, these Capitol bullies can do whatever they like to me as long as you survive. Keep safe, think about me as often as I think about you. Please, stop fighting the Capitol and just survive under them, just co-operate, don't get hurt. Please.

I hate you Katniss. This is your fault. You've done this to me. Every second of pain they inflict on me is your fault. I wish I was dead.

"There is," I say. What is going on in my mind? Why do these words escape my mouth when they will not form in my brain? Who is controlling me, forcing me to say these things? I turn to the camera, moving stiffly and wincing again at the pain in my sides. "Don't be a fool, Katniss. Think for yourself. They've turned you into a weapon that could be instrumental in the destruction of humanity. If you've got any real influence, use it to put the brakes on this thing. Use it to stop the war before it's too late. Ask yourself, do you really trust the people you're working with? Do you really know what's going on? And if you don't… find out."

The light on the camera blinks off and in an instant I'm back in the prep room, being stripped of my suit and shoved back into the scruffy sweats. Peacekeepers escort me from the studio back to my cell, a new pad of paper lying on the desk. A small tray of watercolours sits beside it, though minus a brush. I flick off the light and crawl into bed, muting the TV again as I bury myself under the covers.

Finally, sobs that I have been choking back for weeks escape me. It's impossible for me to breath, with a fistful of cloth shoved between my teeth to absorb the screams and the quickly diminishing supply of air under the sheets. I don't care. Maybe it'll be less painful to suffocate. Tears carve salty tracks down my cheeks, washing away the powder from the interview. Eventually they stop, my grief exhausted. "Please." I murmur into the sheets, not knowing who I'm talking to or about. "Please."


	9. Chapter 9

I toss and turn all night until I can take it no more. Time of day unknown, the pure question of whether it is day or night left unanswered. I clamber out of bed and drag myself over to the door, weak from starvation. My bare feet catch on the tiles, their sharp edges pulling at my skin and scratching into the surface. The light clicks as I turn it on, the dim bulb swinging slightly as I stumble into the bathroom cubicle to use the toilet and wipe myself down with a damp rag. The tear tracks from last night are dry on my skin, my lips remain salty from the 'episode'. I rub them away, hating myself for succumbing to my own weaknesses.

I open the pack of cards and scatter them on the rough carpeted floor, laying out a game of solitaire. It's over in a few minutes, my mind getting too good to make the games last longer. Instead I build a house of cards, knock it down and arrange the cards as a picture on the floor. They are a mix of red and blue backed, obviously scraped together from different packs. And then there's the red and black patterns on the front, different densities depending on the numbers. With them I compose a map of district 12. I sigh as I push myself to my knees and haul my tired body to my feet, thinking yet again about Katniss. My body tingles as I do. In less than a second, my map has been destroyed. Kicked to destruction as 12 was burnt. I blink back my grief again as that tingle runs through me and I know that wherever Katniss is she is thinking about me too. That connection we developed over the past year, remaining even after all this time apart.

Assuming my usual position at the desk, I feel the paper and examine the paints. Both of poor quality, about the same as I could get hold of in the district. I suppose with shortages from most of the districts due to rebellion, they don't want to waste the good stuff on me. Maybe they're going to kill me after all, and this distraction is just so I don't kill myself first.

The colours are powdery, obviously made from berries and fruit. The knowledge that they will stain my hands when I use them is delightful, is pleasing to me. The nature of the paints reminds me of the training centre, with the Morphlings from district 6. Oh, how they loved those paints. The colours, more than anything. And the girl Morphling from six, who gave her own life to save mine from the monkey muttations. Was that orchestrated by Haymitch? Did they all work to save me for some specific reason? I find my hand pressed to my cheek, where she painted a blobbish flower with a smudge of her own blood.

I did that myself once, when the sleep syrup was wearing off. Katniss came back to the cave and passed out... there was blood everywhere. I cleaned her up and wrapped her head and let her rest, but instead of using our precious water or allowing the rain to run into the cave and wash away her blood, I used it. To paint. By the time she came around the walls of that cave were covered, floor to ceiling in fingered paintings of us, of our district, of what we could have had if we won. If she hadn't pulled out those berries.

She didn't see the paintings, and the Capitol didn't broadcast them in the games summary, so we didn't get to see them then. But when people from the Capitol go and tour the arena, our cave will be a hotspot, a landmark. They'll see the paintings. They'll understand.

Water runs from the tap over my hands, dripping into the porcelain sink. I cup my hands, carrying a handful of water over to the desk and dripping it onto the wood. Using my fingers, I wet each of the paints and start drawing arched lines across the page. The paper is smooth, the paint sits on top rather than soaking in. I suppose that's how the people see the broadcasts from the Capitol. They see Snow's smoothly constructed image of me, rather than all the things I personally stand for. Maybe I should let all this torture just be the paint. To just sit on top of my personality and mask my true self from Snow, to not sink it. Yes.

As I paint my emotions clash. I question whether I really love Katniss. Whether holding on at all is worth it. I go through loving her and hating her, general indifference and then back round again. About halfway through the painting, I stop thinking about what I'm doing and let my fingers do the work. Let them transmit my true emotions onto the page.

An orange line here, a yellow shape there. I splash water onto the page and dab at it with the edge of my shirt to lighten the colours, staining both the fabric and my hands in the process. It is several hours later when the Peacekeepers march in to take me to be tortured. I examine the pad as they approach the desk to grab my arms, see Katniss standing dark amongst a field of flames.

Satan, in the deepest depths of hell.


	10. Chapter 10

"Peeta. This is your home. None of your family has been heard of since the bombing. Twelve is gone. And you're calling for a ceasefire? There's no one left to hear you." The hollowness in my chest intensifies and I roll over on the bed, clamping the pillow down over my head and hunching my body over itself. Shut up Katniss, please. Don't… make me think about this. It's not my choice! I don't even know what I'm saying half the time, it's like I'm Snow's puppet, doing as he likes at even the slightest twitch of the strings. Please, just… don't.

I rock back and forth, the duvet lying wrinkled on the floor. Tears stain the mattress and though I beg myself to stop crying, to hold myself together, they keep on coming. I bite down on my tongue as the sobs come, thick and heavy and pathetic. Calmness takes over as I sniff and open my eyes, taking in the cool darkness.

The door is pushed open gently and a female Peacekeeper steps in- the only one I've ever seen. She removes her helmet and her long blonde hair falls in waves over her shoulders, gently unfurling itself from where it was wrapped up on top of her head. "Come on, you're wanted for another broadcast." Her voice is sweet but gruff, like it was once girly but she's trained it to be tough. "Looks like you're having a better time than the other prisoners, I can say that much. I'm Eva, I'll be your… personal guard, from this moment on. First few months on the job, surprised they trust me with something as big as this, but there we are."

"You don't question what they're doing, you don't… object to this?" I extend my arms, motioning to the maze of underground tunnels. As we walk, I realise that this is the first time I do so without having to be dragged, without being cuffed.

She turns to face me, a carefully shaped eyebrow raised. "It's acceptable. It's better than what they had in the old days, before the fights and all that what broke out across the land. Back then it were two to a room, a toilet in the corner and a tiny barred window in the wall. And then even before then, you was hung from these chains in the wall, danglin' in mid-air by yer wrists or yer ankles, dependin' on your crime. Here, you got heating, a TV and a desk, the freedom to draw and entertain yerself.

"And it's not a bad life compared to the other two. I mean that one… Enobaria? She's living the cushy life, even better off than you I'd wager. Room like our headquarters, possibly even better. But that other one, the girl. Johanna, is it? You ought to see her. You know that tiled room you had? It's like that in there, but without the toilet. Poor girl…"

Her accent shines through as she talks, the controlled manner she displayed in my room vanishing and then coming back depending on her mood. I've decided that it's passion, knowledge, that makes her natural voice shine through the practiced Capitol accent. I wonder where she's from.

We step out of the lift and she opens the door to the prep room. "I'll be here later to escort you back down. Security reasons, and all that." Two senior officials march down the corridor, talking quietly and hurriedly- but in their haste not quietly enough.

"Missiles, yes. Almost all of the districts are rallying against us."

"But they'll kill hundreds of people… perhaps everyone in Thirteen- including the girl."

"I think that's what Snow wants if I'm honest with you, Jenkins."

"When for, immediately?"

"No, Snow said to wait. The middle of the night- the element of surprise. Even if we don't kill everyone, the facilities will be severely damaged."

My stomach flips as I step into the prep room, pretending not to have heard. Perspiration drips down my face as the prep team grab my arms and I let them bustle me about. My body adheres to their command as they scrub away at my skin, polishing my artificial leg again. But for all their scrubbing the scars still remain, my hands still stained with the fiery watercolours.

They rub makeup into my skin and fix it with powder, but as I catch sight of myself in the mirror I realise just how terrible I look. My skin is pale, even with the makeup over it. My eyes sit in hollows in my head, surrounded by the dark circles of many sleepless nights.

I'm drawn away from the mirror and guided back up the corridor by armed Peacekeepers. We enter the lift and emerge in lush surroundings. My feet sink into the deep-pile carpet as I tread forward, walking carefully towards the President, who sits at his large mahogany desk in the centre of the room. I chuckle, remembering Effie's reaction on the train when Katniss attacked Haymitch with her knife.

Katniss.

_Thirteen._

**_Missiles._**

"Ah! Mr Mellark!" A broad smile snakes across his lips, his mouth opening in a cold grin. "Now, you are to just explain the outlines of a few things, there'll be a map, just talk about the state in the districts. You've seen the Capitol reports and the propos that Thirteen have been airing in the districts- just talk about what you've seen!" He speaks warmly, shaking my hand and then resting his hand on my back as he guides me onto a stage at one end of the huge room. "You're a natural with words, as I recall your interviews with Caesar before the games and since you've been here have been just... swell. I'm sure you'll do just fine today, too."

On the stage stands a podium, a camera sits expectantly on the stone tiles before it whilst a techno-buff I know fromt he studio adjusts a projector on the ceiling to show a map of Panem on the plain white screen behind. A second man hauls a chair over from one side and puts it beside the map. "You will sit there," Snow points to the chair, slightly elevated with a metal rung to rest my feet on, "And I will stand here. I will introduce the programme, talk about the state of things, and you will use the map to back up what I say. All okay?"

His eyebrows arch comically as he studies my nervous face, the sheer agony of the bruises upon bruises on my ribs and stomach making me wince with every breath. I nod and step onto the stage to examine the map, reminding myself of the location of each of the districts. It's difficult to believe that this is one of the only occupiable nations on the entire planet, the lone area worth living in. I place my hand over district Twelve and the projected image shines onto my skin, so that the entire district is mapped out on the back of my hand. My home, so far away from the Capitol. The Capitol, so far away from Katniss in Thirteen.


	11. Chapter 11

"Welcome, citizens of Panem! I assure you that the Capitol remains in control, and that we shall never relent. Even in the darkest of times, our light will come shining through to brighten each and every one of your smiling faces!" Even as he speaks I imagine the faces of every member of Panem, not smiling but dirty and bloodied, poverty-stricken and downtrodden.

Beads of sweat roll down my forehead and I start tapping out a tune on the metal rung under my feet, a mindless beating of metal on metal, the satisfaction of hearing the clash and the tinny echo in the huge room too much temptation to resist. My mind is not focused on what Snow has to say, but thinking about Katniss- where she is right now and if she's watching this. Oh how I hope she is.

The light on the stage swings to me as Snow steps into the shadows. I squint and clear my throat, taking the tiny metal pointer from my jacket pocket and extending it into a slim metal pole. My voice is constricted as it escapes my lips, the words not coming as freely as I would like. "We uhm… we really need a ceasefire. There's been a broken damn in 7," I struggle to locate 7 on the map to point my stick at it and feel the colour of embarrassment rising in my cheeks. "And a derailed train with tonnes of toxic waste spilling from the cars. Not only does this harm the environment, but is potentially deadly to us and to future generations. This granary collapsing in 9, after a fire. You may think it's not a problem, but it is. Panem- it means bread. It's our staple food, the main part of our diet. Without bread, we fall. What is bread made from? Flour. How do we get flour? Granaries. It's all interconnected, and if we let the rebels win, let them take over and destroy these buildings… where does that leave us? The nation as a whole…"

Katniss face flashes up on the monitor behind the camera, showing what is being broadcast to the nation. She is standing in the smoking wreckage of a bakery- my bakery- as her dark eyes look directly into mine.

I am distracted when the screen cuts back to me, the shock at having seen Katniss almost making me fall from my chair. "The nation as a whole will fall into disrepair. Watertanks in several districts have already been destroyed, leading to a nationwide shortage of clean and fre-" Finnick interrupts me this time, talking about Rue in the arena. As I try and continue speaking, Thirteen take over control of the broadcasts and release it again, showing various short clips, shots I recognise from the propos.

The screen in the distance shows the Capitol seal with a flat tone for a few seconds, while Snow clears his throat and steps back up to the podium. The map flashes off and I collapse the pointer, slipping it back into the shallow pocket. "The rebels are clearly attempting to disrupt the dissemination of information they find incriminating, but both truth and justice will reign. The full broadcast will resume when full security has been reinstated. Now, Peeta. Given tonight's demonstration, do you have any parting thoughts for a certain Miss Katniss Everdeen?"

I look up at the mention of my name and my throat goes dry at the mention of hers. My face crumples up as I beg words to come, to let me tell her this one thing. "Katniss… how do you think this will end? What will be left? No one is safe. Not in the Capitol, not in the districts. And you… in Thirteen…" My eyes brighten as I realise I can do it. I can warn her! I grin, sitting up, and inhale deeply. I almost shout the last line in my desperation to get it out, in my determination to make myself heard. "Dead by morning!"

Katniss' face flashes onto and off of the screen as Snow roars in anger. Peacekeepers march forward and grab me by the arms. The camera falls onto the white tiled floor as I shout out Katniss' name, howling madly for her to listen, begging them to understand.

A Peacekeeper throws me to the floor and my head hits the hard tiles, sending everything plunged into darkness- but not far enough. I feel the wracking pain as every boot collides with my body, the release as a burst of blood ejects itself from my body and splatters itself against the ground.


	12. Chapter 12

My limbs throb as I lie face up on the tiled floor, gazing at the tiled ceiling. Stripped of my luxurious compartment, my paper and my watercolours and thrown back down here to rot. Too close to the torture chambers for comfort. My stomach reeling and my head spinning, I lie and wonder if Thirteen got the message, if they understood. If all this pain and suffering on my behalf will save Katniss.

Even as I lay here, blood dripping down my face and pooling on the floor, congealing in my matted hair, I think only of Katniss. The fact that dozens of bombs are being dropped onto her home as I lie here unable to help, the sheer possibility that she didn't make it to safety in time. I begin to consider the possibility that she is dating Gale, enraging me even more. Where was he when she needed him? Then I stop myself.

_Where am I now, when she needs me? How can I help her when I'm stuck here, my mind being trained to hate her?_

Tracker jacker 'treatment' becomes more frequent, the Capitol in more haste to completely erase all love I feel for Katniss. And, the more of a beating I take, the more of her I lose. As the Peacekeepers kick me and beat me up, the venom warps their faces into that of Katniss, so that every ounce of pain inflicted on me is done by her.

Even Eva is forced to punish me, to dig her hard boots into my side with the threat that if she doesn't, she'll be joining me. Her hazel eyes glisten with tears of regret as her fists pummel my chest, beating out an echoing tune on the hollow compartment. She apologises when she drops me back at my room later, her face dropping in shame.

Her eyes are red from crying, her fists raw from beating against me. I know she went light on me, punched in a way that looked hard but was little more than a butterfly batting its wings on my chest, but it hurt just the same- the lightest touch on my heavily bruised skin simply agony.

Gradually I begin to wonder what I ever saw in Katniss, why I ever liked her. My memory warps her face, twisting her features angrily. Her flowing hair becomes a messy nest, her grey eyes soul-less windows into her center. Something in the back of my mind keeps shouting at me to remember, to love her, but the more venom that flows through my blood, the more it gets nudged back in my brain until it is barely audible.

I am losing her, my Katniss. The girl that I've loved from the very beginning, from when my eyes first found her in the school playground. My father's stories of her mother spin through my brain and wrap themselves around the sore memories, trying to heal them. It's futile, the venom sending out spikes and stabbing my fathers words through the counters. As time passes, I begin to lose even myself. My eyes rarely see anything but the darkness in the space between my arms and my knees, as I sit pressed against the wall and curled into a ball, constantly drowning in a concoction of drugs and lies.

There's just two memories that stay with me, that I cling to with everything I have. It's her, in the arena. That kiss, after Finnick revived me. Her face was wet with tears, salty with grief. She'd thought I was dead, that Finnick was making sure. That expression of relief on her face, that I came back to her... I will never forget the way her lips felt against mine. Soft and wet and salty and real. True, honest. Like she really did love me. I will not let them take it away from me. The other is the very first, the one with the bread.


	13. Chapter 13

When the light flickers back on, I am lying face up against the wall by the door. There is a tray of food on the far side of the room, like they are nothing less than determined to torture me even when they're not around. I dig my brittle fingers into the gaps between the tiles and pull myself across the floor, grunting with the effort.

On the tray is a steaming bowl of red beans and rice- the one food that it is possible to live off for the rest of your life. At least I know they don't plan on killing me any time soon. I force myself to choke down the swollen grains and chew up the beans, but my throat doesn't seem to want to swallow them. Each mouthful takes ten minutes to swallow, takes a whole lot of determination that I barely possess. I don't even know why I force myself to do this anymore. It makes me laugh, internally, that out of all the food they have up there, that their citizens gorge themselves on and even throw up just so they can eat more of, this is all they can spare. This meager dish, something more suited to one of the districts than the Capitol. In fact, I'm pretty sure Finnick and I managed to rustle up a better dish in that last arena. Finnick. The tingle of his skin against mine as he revived me suddenly comes back and I shiver. That tingle, so different to the one that runs down my spine when I think about Katniss. No, this is the tingle of fear, not of love. Fear of the games and the memories they bring. The other tingle, the one I feel about Katniss... it's different to how it used to feel, stronger, more... ominous. I'd call it fear, but it's closer to hatred.

When I have scraped the bowl clean and swallowed the last few grains of rice, I allow myself to gulp down the water. It's lukewarm, another reminder of the last arena. It has a chemical tang to it that the water back home in District 12 lacked. While my brain jumps to the conclusion of a different purification system, a nagging voice at the back of my head tells me it's some kind of drug. This voice is quickly silenced, making me think all the more that it was correct.

My mind continues in this confusing circle until a revelation hits me. I crawl over to the toilet hole. I could do it. Just jump down there, swim or paddle through the sewers and take my chances wherever they come out. Alternatively I guess I could drown down there, if it came to it. The stench is unbearable though, and the drop too far to comprehend. Noxious bubbles rise to the surface and burst, emitting a foul gas that wafts into my nostrils, burning the hairs lining my nose. Somehow I'd rather die of thirst or starvation or serious internal injury than drown in a pile of crap- some of it my own. I just need to escape, to be outside.

I roll away from the hole and lie face up on the tiles in the middle of the room, squinting in pain at the dull light dangling above my head. My eyelids are heavy and threaten to close, my body limp and unable to move. That water definitely contained some sort of drug, alright. The room spins around me when I lift my head off the floor, and it smacks back down on the ceramic tiles with a loud 'crack'. All of a sudden, the light blinks off. I can't really tell if my eyes are closed or if it's just dark, and I can't really move to find out.

The door to my room creaks open in the darkness, but no light enters from the corridor beyond. _What's going on?_ Footsteps patter into the room, people curse quietly as they trip over each other. A dim torch light shines around the room, and my eyes fall closed as it finds my face. Huh, I guess they were open, then.

A gasp escapes the mouths of whoever is in my room. "Did it work?" Eva- I'd know that accent, that voice anywhere- but what is she doing here? Gentle hands grab my wrists and feel my pulse, brushing the damp hair back off my forehead, pulling open my eyes and shining a torch into them.

"Yeah." Someone breathes- a male this time, his voice slightly familiar but altogether alienated, like nothing is really happening. Fingers trace the cuts on my face, the bruises on my neck. "Katniss isn't going to be happy about this." My blood begins to boil at the mention of her name, rage fills my otherwise empty body. That familiar tingle runs down my spine, my whole body tenses, and then it passes.

"Get him out of here." Eva again, her breathy whisper close to my face, quiet but loud enough so that everyone in the room hears clearly. Have they finally decided to kill me? I hope so... any escape is an escape. If they're killing me, I hope they do it quickly. I don't think I could take much more torture. Or... have they knocked me out to…? My mind goes blank, no answer, no conclusion to that thought springing to the fore of my brain. Someone lifts me into the air and slings me over their shoulder. Even drugged I'm jealous of their muscles, their strength. I had all of that once, but the Capitol have taken that too. My strength, my power. My dignity.

As they jog down the corridor they begin to pant from exhaustion and exertion. They halt and another door creaks open, prised from its frame by some metallic grinding sound. Gasps from all around this time, the men grunting as they heave another tortured soul from a tiled compartment. Johanna, I think. Now I really hope they kill us. I don't think I could sit there and listen to her screams for another minute.

One more compartment, some angry grumbling and some cursing about some 'immunity clause' later, fresh air hits my face. My body is jolted from left to right, more than once I have to be heaved back onto the shoulder of the man carrying me. That little voice at the back of my brain gives muted suggestions as to who it could be, but the drugs muffle it and push it away until it's almost inaudible. Almost, but not completely.

I am outside! I want to scream and shout and jump for joy, but of course whatever drugs they laced into the food or the water renders my body useless, so it's only in my mind that I can celebrate, and even there the celebration is not as loud as I need it to be.

The thought that I am no longer underground, the mere possibility that I may now be leaving the Capitol sets my emotions at a high I have not felt for several years. Isn't this just what I wanted, a matter of minutes ago? Fresh air?

I regain the ability to open my eyes as I'm carried across a vast concrete yard- which judging by the painted squares on the grey stone floor is some kind of parking lot. A carpark. Only here. Only in the Capitol. A few flashy cars sit closer to the grand buildings, quickly disappearing into the darkness as we jog away from them.

A platform appears in mid-air and the group of men step up onto it. As I'm swung around I catch sight of the other prisoners, all just as weak and skinny as I have become, both of them heavily unconscious. Johanna is closest to me, her lips slightly parted, her cheeks hollow and her eyes sitting in dark pits. This weak, helpless girl so different to the woman we allied with in the last Arena. The woman that stripped off in the elevator in the Training Centre, exposing her unmarked and shiny skin, her hands and legs painted with dappled browns and greens. Katniss was so red.

Katniss.

Is that where we're going? To her?

I hope we are.

I hope we aren't.

The platform rises and soon we enter a small hovercraft, containing nothing more than a table with some chairs around it, a couple of stretchers and a team of medics. We're all lowered onto stretchers and the medics come over to examine us. I chuckle slightly as I imagine their faces as they see my emaciated body, starved and shrunk by the Capitol, devoid of muscle or fat. Skin and bones, a layer of grime thick enough to compensate for the lack of substance. The group of men who brought us here start to walk over to the table, patting each other on the back in congratulations.

As they get further away I crane my neck to see if I can recognise any of them- but there's only Gale there that I can name. He's not a bad guy, is Gale. There was a time when I hated him, but I can't remember why. Something to do with... Katniss.

Katniss.

I lie back down and close my eyes, content to be out of the Capitol regardless of wherever we're heading. Even if it's towards her.

Latex-covered hands pick up my wrists and feel my pulse, pull my shirt over my head and examine the bruising on my chest and ribs. An involuntary gasp penetrates my lips as they press down on a particularly sore spot. The air hisses through gritted teeth, slightly parted lips. I open my eyes again and gaze up through the impending dizziness at the spinning lights above me. The face of the medic swims into view above me, her young face nervous and tense.

She opens her mouth to bring attention to either another medic or one of the guards but I shake my head and close my eyes again, letting her know that I gave up fighting a long time ago. There's no point fighting these people. They aren't the enemy. Nobody else approaches and I drift back to sleep as the hovercraft picks up speed and starts to zoom over Panem.


	14. Chapter 14

When I wake, I am in a pristine hospital room in Thirteen. My cuts have been cleaned and stitched and a team of doctors stands by. At my awakening they rush forward to check my pulse- again- and flash lights into my eyes. I brush them away and turn, looking for someone, anyone I know.

I see someone coming down the corridor towards me- Haymitch and… Katniss! I push the doctors aside and leap from the bed, still shaky on my feet from being knocked out for so long. As I run towards her I am overcome with… an emotion. It's something I've never felt before, something that doesn't have a name in my mind.

I run down the ward towards her. Her hair hangs in a limp braid down the side of her head, much shorter than it used to be. She runs towards me now, her boots squeaking on the white linoleum. Her face widens in a grin and she's right in front of me, her hands outstretched to embrace me. I raise my hands too, higher than hers. As she throws herself into me, I wrap my hands around her throat.

My thumbs find a hollow in her neck and I press down on it, grinning in delight as she gargles in desperation. She coughs and splutters as my hands grip tighter and people grab me from all sides, trying to pull me off her. Haymitch catches Katniss as she falls to the floor, unconscious.

He looks up at me in disgust as I stare at my hands, mystified at the power they have. A fist collides with my head and my eyes roll back and then slide closed. I fall to the floor and feel my knees shatter at they hit the hard floor. As I fall onto my side, a smile stretches itself onto my lips. "Get him out of here." Haymitch says, shifting under the weight of Katniss on top of him.

There's a tiny part of me that's very confused, conflicted. I wanted to see her, I wanted to. So why this? Why did I try to kill her... did I kill her?

It seems all people want to do is 'get me out' of wherever it is I might be. I groan as I come around, strapped to a bed. Where is Katniss? Is she alive, dead? I'm confused about what is real and what isn't anymore, my head throbbing in the spot where someone punched me and knocked me out. Do I want her to be alive? Do I want her dead?

A doctor- someone from Thirteen, that I don't know, presses gently on the bruises on my ribs and asks me how they feel. My only reply is 'better' and then I go back to staring at the plain white ceiling.

The medics wheel me into a smaller white room with a small bathroom off to one side of it and release the restraints on my head and legs. A one-way window sits in the wall opposite me, a chair sitting against the wall at the end of my bed. I realise that from this moment onwards I will be constantly watched, under surveillance 24/7.

The medics leave the room and something tells me they're standing on the other side of the window, watching me along with how many others. As I lie in silence counting the ripples in the plaster on the ceiling until the door swings open and someone walks in. I raise my head to look at who it is and my face breaks into a smile as someone from District Twelve saunters in. Someone I recognise, from a long while ago.

She grins when she sees me and stands awkwardly beside the bed, her back to the window. "Peeta? It's Delly. From home."

"Delly?" The fogginess surrounding her in my memory clears and suddenly everything is so clear. "Delly. It's you."

"Yes!" I can tell she is relieved, genuinely happy that I know who she is. "How do you feel?"

I feel the opportunity, the urge to learn, to know. "Awful. Where are we? What's happened?"

"Well… we're in District Thirteen. We live here now." I know this has all been set up by Thirteen, Delly carefully instructed on what she can and can't say, but I want- I need- to know more.

"That's what those people have been saying. But it makes no sense. Why aren't we home?" I know full well why we aren't home- the Capitol destroyed _home_. I just want to see how much Thirteen is willing to tell me.

She bites her lip for a moment, hesitates before she speaks like she's waiting for some sort of instruction. "There was… an accident. I miss home badly, too. I was only just thinking about those chalk drawings we used to do on the paving stones. Yours were so wonderful. Remember when you made each one a different animal?"

"Yeah. Pigs and cats and things. You said… about an accident?" Droplets of sweat appear on her forehead and I know I've reached taboo, things that can't be spoken about either in the district or just around me.

"It was bad. No one… could stay." She shifts her weight from one foot to the other and clicks her fingers. "But I know you're going to like it here, Peeta. The people have been really nice to us. There's always food and clean clothes, and school's much more interesting."

I already know the answer to my next question, I know it will hurt me- and yet I ask it anyway. "Why hasn't my family come to see me?" I know the answer already. I've seen it in the propos. And it's_ her_ fault. I just need to know for sure.

Tears prick at her eyes as the forms the words, thinks about the unavoidable. "They can't. A lot of people didn't get out of Twelve. So we'll need to make a new life here. I'm sure they could use a good baker. Do you remember when your father used to let us make dough boys and girls?"

I've had enough of pretending, of her changing the subject. "There was a fire." It comes out in a rush, a loud sentence blurted out rather suddenly.

"Yes." Her voice is barely audible, her whisper like the rustling of leaves in autumn. It's almost a whisper, a slight squeak.

"Twelve burned down, didn't it? Because of her." Anger escapes me now, inhuman rage taking over my body once more. I fight against the restraints and I'm suddenly thankful that they're there, for Delly's sake. "Because of Katniss!" I can't control my body as it shakes and quivers and I rock back and forth, trying to loosen the straps.

"Oh, no, Peeta. It wasn't her fault." She's backing away, heading back towards the door as I battle to escape from the strips of fabric holding me to the bed.

"Did she tell you that?" I hiss through my teeth, seething. The door opens and Delly shuffles backwards across the soft floor to the safety of the corridor outside.

"She didn't have to. I was-"

"Because she's lying! She's a liar! You can't believe anything she says! She's some kind of mutt the Capitol created to use against us!" I don't even know where the last bit came from, a haunting thought that crossed my mind and escaped my fiery lips. Like the jabberyjays, or the monkeys, or the wolves.

"No, Peeta. She's not a-"

"Don't trust her Delly," I urge, frantically. "I did, and she tried to kill me. She killed my friends, my family. Don't even go near her! She's a mutt!" Despite my previous uncertainty, I start to believe my own words. The more I say it the more sense it makes, the truer it becomes. A hand reaches into the room and snatches Delly from view. The door swings shut and I'm alone again- but for whoever is on the other side of the glass.

I continue to yell, hoping everyone in the district- no, in all of Panem- can hear me. "She's a mutt! She's a stinking mutt! Kill her! I hate her! Don't trust her!" Any words that come to mind I scream into the silence, hoping someone, somewhere hears them and takes note.


	15. Chapter 15

I am now free to walk around my room, no longer fastened to the bed in the corner. And they put a TV in my room, embedded in a protective concrete case so I can't destroy it. It shows the constant Capitol broadcasts, the occasional Thirteen propo. Whenever Katniss' face appears on screen my blood chills and then boils, rage builds up inside me until I want to scream and punch her and kill her. And then the rage passes and I'm calm again- albeit slightly unhinged.

The screen on the TV flickers off for a moment and then a new clip starts playing, one that I have not seen before. "Peeta- it is important you watch this and tell us what you feel." A voice I don't know, probably another one of the medics. It's Katniss, sitting in a forest clearing.

"Angry. Why are you showing me more videos of that mutt?" Disgust wells inside me, but also a kind of indifference, a numbness.

"Keep watching."

And so I do, and she begins to sing. When she opens her mouth, all the mockingjays around her fall silent, stop singing the tune she'd been whistling to them seconds before. I recognise the song, something from our childhood. Memories of her father singing it. "I remember it… this song. Her father sang it one time when he came to trade in our bakery. I… I was listening specially to see if the birds stopped singing." Instead of raging at Katniss and hating on her, I close my eyes as her tongue wraps easily around the words.

The song flows through my mind like a river of silk, the sweetness of it like the spoonful of honey my father used to give me when I was ill. "I'm not angry anymore." I tell the empty room, singing along in my head. She finishes the song and the birds carry on, their warbling voices rippling over the fluctuations in pitch.

"Good." The capitol broadcast comes back on, a new report that I have been kidnapped by Thirteen. There is a great difference between kidnapped and rescued, my _friend_.

When a new Thirteen broadcast airs, I am huddled in the corner of the padded room, stroking the dappled bruises on my skin and the cuts on my chest and face. What did I do to deserve this, the pain, the disfigurement? I was never handsome, never attractive- but now I'm just plain ugly.

It's Katniss, in 2. She stands at the top of the steps, illuminated by the white light. Her mockingjay outfit gleams, her pale, imperfect skin shining bright. She reaches up to her collar and presses something, then clears her throat. "People of District 2, this is Katniss Everdeen speaking to you from the steps of the Justice Building, where-" She stops as two trains come screeching out from the base of the collapsing mountain, drawing to a halt in the station and opening the doors to allow crowds of people to come tumbling out.

The people flatten themselves onto the floor, bullets rain down on them and a few fight back with hand guns and rifles. A few of the wounded moan in pain, the sickening cries reaching me all the way here in Thirteen.

The lights blink off, leaving Katniss in darkness, but the camera keeps on rolling. One of the trains bursts into flames, black smoke begins billowing over the square as people push across it, choking and waving their guns.

Suddenly, Katniss runs down the steps into the crowded square. I find myself biting my nails, waiting anxiously for this all to come to an end. "Stop! Hold your fire! Stop!" She reaches down to help up a young man, who is lying face down on the floor. He pushes himself onto his elbows, drags himself to his knees and raises his gun, pointing it towards Katniss' head.

She backs up and takes her bow from her back, holding it in the air in surrender. The man puts his other hand on his gun and trains it on her, gritting his teeth. "Give me one reason I shouldn't shoot you."

I expect Katniss to come up with millions of reasons, hundreds upon hundreds of excuses. She drops her hands a little and sighs. "I can't." She closes her eyes and opens them again, the camera and every eye in the square trained on the miner and Katniss. "I can't. That's the problem, isn't it?" She drops her bow to her side. What are you doing Katniss? "We blew up your mine. You burned my district to the ground. We've got every reason to kill each other. So do it. Make the Capitol happy. I'm done killing their slaves for them." My heart leaps and falls simultaneously as she drops her bow to the floor. He's going to shoot her. She;s going to die and she's just going to embrace it with open arms.

I don't understand why, how she is doing this. "I'm not their slave." The man says, lowering his gun slightly but keeping it trained on her. My heart tugs this way and that and I'm afraid for a moment that it'll rip clean in two. Maybe he should shoot her, and just end this.

"I am. That's why I killed Cato… and he killed Thresh… and he killed Clove… and she tried to kill me. It just goes around and around, and who wins? Not us. Not the districts. Always the Capitol. But I'm tired of being a piece in their games." My gut tingles as she says this, tears prickle my eyes. I said that, I know I did- and she remembers. Does she really love me? Is she manipulating me? There's no way I can ever know, so why do I continue to ask?

Fear grips me as I watch, the tension in the tiny cell so thick I could cut it with a knife. He's going to shoot her. She is going to die. I have seen too many people to die to watch Katniss fall too- she's always been the one for me to protect… and now I can't protect her and I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing, how I'm supposed to feel.

I realise now just how lost I am without her. "When I saw that mountain fall tonight, I thought… they've done it again. Got me to kill you- the people in the districts. But why did I do it? District Twelve and District 2 have no fight except the one the Capitol gave us." She kneels in front of the young man in front of her, her eyes pleading. "And why are you fighting with the rebels on the rooftops? With Lyme, who was your victor? With people who were your neighbours, maybe even your family?"

"I don't know." But his gun is still pointing at Katniss. This could go either way, and it's like watching a play… only real, so very real. My brain is still spinning- dizzy from her singing, confused about whether she is a mutt or a real person, whether _I_ am the mutt the Capitol have developed.

Katniss stands and turns around, looking up and speaking to the rebels manning the machine guns. "And you up there? I come from a mining town. Since when do miners condemn other miners to that kind of death, and then stand by to kill whoever manages to crawl through the rubble?" Of course- her father was killed in a blast in the mines in Twelve. She can't bear to see these wounded people, because she knows this is what her father could have looked like in his dying moments- that this is what he experienced.

"These people are not your enemy!" She points to the square and then over to the train station. "The rebels are not your enemy! We all have one enemy, and it's the Capitol!" If what she's saying is true, then I should work with her, not fight against her. "This is our chance to put an end to their power, but we need every district person to do it!"

She reaches out to the man and looks up to the screen to see the effect her words have had on the crowd, to see what the rest of us are seeing. "Please! Join us!"

The crowd is silent, and then a single gunshot rings through the air and Katniss crumples to the floor, shock and pain etched on her face.

Katniss! I squeeze my eyes shut and try and block out the image in my mind, to try and forget it, but I can't. Is she alive? Is she dead? My brain hurts as I cower in the corner and try and figure out how to feel- should I be glad that she could be dead, should I be worried? Should I celebrate, should I cry?

I end up shocked into submission, too confused to react. By the time I gather my emotions and decide to act indifferent, the moment for reactions has passed.


	16. Chapter 16

Turns out, Katniss survived. They show me the footage they're showing across Panem, Katniss sitting in her hospital bed and showing off her impressive array of more recent battle scars. It chills my blood to know that she is so near to me, just down the corridor. That mutt, so close, could attack at any given moment, but she is the mockingjay and she is against the Capitol, and I too am against the Capitol so I suppose I should be on her side, right?

A short while after the propo is aired, a doctor enters my room and motions for me to sit on the chair- though I'm already sitting on the floor so it's a bit of a pointless venture. "I understand you used to decorate the cakes in your father's bakery?" I nod in response, listening intently. The mere mention of my father unsettles me slightly but I shake my head and get over it- that was in the past, this is now.

"You are familiar with the District 4 tribute, Finnick Odair, and his love for the past Victor Annie Cresta?" Again I nod, not quite sure who Annie is but then remembering the red-headed girl carried from the Capitol along with Johanna and I. Of course... Enobaria is with the Capitol... "It is by request of one Haymitch Abernathy, along with several other members of Thirteen who are concerned of your wellbeing, that you decorate the wedding cake. You will be taken to the kitchens tomorrow where you will be given your own workspace and any decorations you require that we are able to obtain. If you do a good job, we will see it that your recovery is coming along nicely and allow you a little more freedom."

Freedom. The word sounds good as it circles my brain. Yes, freedom. "I'll do it."

The cake itself is huge, with three tiers and rich blue icing as a base to work on. Armed with a piping bag, I pipe careful waves of turquoise frosting onto the tiers, tipping each crest with a line of white. I fashion fish and sail boats and seals and flowers, and stick them into the waves. For a finishing touch I drape a light net over the cake, gathering it and letting it flow down the side of the cake.

It takes days to complete, the utmost concentration on my part and constant supervision by various Thirteen guards, but eventually it is done. I step back from my creation with a proud grin on my face, my aching hands shaking with need for rest. As I finish, Haymitch walks into the kitchen and dismisses the guard standing duty, coming over to talk to me.

"Peeta! Marvellous job!" He eyes the cake up and down, looking closely at the tiniest of details.

I sound almost bored when I look up at him and utter the 5 words, "What do you want, Haymitch?" He chortles a little, his skinny shoulders shaking. "You… you left me in the arena and the Capitol took me… you didn't tell me about the plot- you knew I was ready to sacrifice myself for… for her. I just… you left me!" I put down the piping bag I still clutch in my hand, scared of ruining the cake.

"I'm sorry Peeta. Very, very sorry. What… what can I do to make it up to you?

There is just one thing I want, just one thing in the whole world that I can ask Haymitch for. "I want to see her." His face pales, knowing what I mean.

"You're not going to…?" He asks, eyeing me suspiciously. I shake my head and he sighs, looking again at the cake and then at the floor. "Okay, I'll ask her- but you'll have to comply with her conditions… and you may have to be restrained again to be on the safe side." Understanding what he says, I nod and step away from the cake.

Four members of kitchen staff grab the trolley that the cake rests on and begin to wheel it away, starting the journey to the wedding. A guard clicks some handcuffs onto my wrists and leads me back to a my hospital room, getting me to lie down on my bed and attaching three restraints to each arm, a tube in my shoulder to drug me if things get out of hand. My heart lifts as I realise this means I will see Katniss, that I can speak to her again.

My mood fluctuates as I lie waiting for her to arrive. Up and down, elated and angry. Upset, betrayed, happy, indifferent. It's hours before there's a light tap on my door and in she steps- The Mockingjay, the Mutt, the Girl on Fire. Katniss Everdeen.


	17. Chapter 17

"Hey." She's standing perhaps a metre away, her arms crossed protectively across her ribs. She seems perplexed as to why I'm not fighting my restraints and trying to kill her, and as to that- I'm pretty confused too.

"Hey." My voice wavers a little, the sound struggling through my dry throat.

She looks about the room and then back at my face, directly into my eyes. "Haymitch said you wanted to talk to me."

No, Katniss. Not quite as simple as that. "Look at you, for starters." I stare at her, carefully running my eyes over every inch of her body. She's dressed in the Thirteen day clothes, they grey trousers with the lighter grey shirt tucked into them. How cheery. A huge scar dominates her arm, tiny cuts and scrapes decorate her pale skin. She keeps glancing over to the window while I look at her, trying to figure her out. "You're not very big, are you? Or particularly pretty?"

She looks a bit uneasy as my statement, bites her lip and looks _yet again_ at the window. "Well, you've looked better."

I laugh, for the first time in ages- and it's not a particularly mean one. At least, I don't mean it to be. She's a bit rude, really. "And not even remotely nice. To say that to me after all I've been through."

"Yeah. We've all been through a lot." Who is 'we'? I hope she's not referring to us two in the collective. I really hope she isn't referring to us both as a group. "And you're the one who was known for being nice, not me." She seems really cold and defensive, always changing the topic back to me rather than herself. Insecure.

She drops her head and turns her body away from me, starting to walk towards the door. My body jolts- I don't want her to leave. "Look, I don't feel so well. Maybe I'll drop by tomorrow." No… she has to stay! What can I say to her, what will make her stop? An idea comes to mind so suddenly I'm surprised nobody notices the light bulb burst from my head and start flashing loudly.

"Katniss. I remember about the bread."

"They showed you the tape of me talking about it." She still faces the door, her head still drooping.

"No. Is there a tape of you talking about it? Why didn't the Capitol use it against me?"

"I made it the day you were rescued." She turns around to face me again, her fingers digging further and further into her sides as she hugs her chest. Her face softens as she looks at me again, pain flashing in her eyes. "What do you remember?"

"You. In the rain." My voice softens, the memory sweet and undistorted by the venom. Pure and unpolluted by the Capitol. "Digging in our rubbish bins. Burning the bread. My mother hitting me. Taking the bread out for the pig but then giving it to you instead."

"That's it. That's what happened. The next day, after school, I wanted to thank you. But I didn't know how." Her voice is sad, her eyes dropping away from my face yet again. This girl has some serious confidence problems- I wonder how she even managed to get through the interviews before the games, how she managed to do all those propos. This is not the Katniss I now know.

"We were outside at the end of the day. I tried to catch your eye. You looked away. And then… for some reason, I think you picked a dandelion." She nods, confirming that what I've said is true. I drag my eyes away from her face and gaze at the white ceiling for a moment. "I must have loved you a lot."

Her voice cracks when she speaks, and she tries to cover it up with a cough. "You did."

"And did you love me?" This is the one question that has been on my lips for so long, the one thing I have to know. She continues to stare down at the floor as she speaks.

"Everyone says I did. Everyone says that's why Snow has you tortured. To break me."

"That's not an answer." Disappointment laces my words like poison. "I don't know what to think when they show me some of the tapes. In the first arena, it looked like you tried to kill me with the tracker jackers."

"I was trying to kill all of you." So I was right then. She hates me- or at least did, when I loved her with all of my heart for no reason that I can now justify. "You had me treed."

"Later, there's a lot of kissing. Didn't seem very genuine on your part. Did you like kissing me?" She blushes a little, glancing up at the window once more.

"Sometimes. You know people are watching us now?"

"I know. What about Gale?" I try and keep my voice steady and calm, but am unable to hide the stab of accusation in my words.

"He's not a bad kisser either." She says, her head snapping up.

"And it was OK with both of us? You kissing the other?"

"No. It wasn't OK with either of you. But I wasn't asking for your permission." She steps forward angrily, then takes a timid step backwards again. I laugh coldly at her, unbelieving that I was ever attracted to this… mutt.

"Well, you're a piece of work, aren't you?" She turns around again and storms out. I watch her down the hall and then lay my head back down on the bed, needing to think.

So, she kissed both me and Gale. She sometimes liked it with me and she thought it was OK with Gale too. But why did I love her? She's not… pretty. She's nothing special to look at and there isn't much in the way of personality there either. She's pure nasty, probably not a mutt- just a really horrible human being… and yet there is still something there. Still some faint attraction that stirs in my gut when I look at her.


	18. Chapter 18

It's not long before Katniss is back in hospital. I stand at my door, watching her from across the ward as she grits her teeth in pain and clenches her fists beside her. I begin to wonder why they even bother with her anymore, what she's doing here, why they don't just let her die. And then I realise two things; that they need her and that this time, she chose to be here.

The mission to the Capitol, to kill Snow and take over. Of course. It had to come sooner or later and since her recent episode in 2, which resulted in the district coming over to the rebel side, there are no other districts to dominate- just the Capitol. And, without any districts to support it, it should be easy enough.

And Katniss wants to go, no doubt to kill Snow herself. And so she's back here, trying to speed up her recovery so she can actually go and fight. Well, you have to admire her, um, determination.

As the next week flows by, Haymitch makes more and more allowances for me. And I was beginning to think that all my hard work on the wedding cake had been forgotten. He sits with me in my room, listens to me moaning about Katniss or answers my questions. And it's not just company he gives me- he brings with him a pad of thin paper and a pencil and tells me to treasure every inch of paper, and "woe betide" if I snap the pencil.

When I look at him questioningly, he shakes his head and grins. "They're strict on equipment here. They thought I was drunk when I asked for them… their faces were actually priceless, honest. Sober for… too long now. But it's not as bad as I remember it…" His skin is still waxy and yellow, but his eyes are a little brighter and he's started to put some weight back on now that he's off the liquid diet.

Delly comes by everyday now to talk to me- mostly about Katniss. When I ask her about something or tell her what I think, she tells me that that is what the Capitol want me to think, and tells me the truth. Gradually my view of Katniss improves and within days I can look at pictures of her without feeling any kind of anger at all.

In fact, the only anger I feel is directed towards the Capitol. On one of his visits, Haymitch tells me that the Capitol discovered Eva aided in my escape and was executed live on television- like my prep team. They blocked the broadcast in my room to protect me. Grief and guilt flood my gut and my nose stings with sadness as I look at the TV- which I keep turned off anyway so I don't have to watch anything from the Capitol. In my mind, I vow to add her to the list of people I will avenge.

By the time the week is up, I've filled one page in the book- as Haymitch suggested, pacing myself. As I sketch and shade and carefully brush over my mistakes with one of the treasured erasers, I wonder what has become of all my drawings of Katniss in the Capitol. The hundreds upon hundreds of drawings, her face and body from every angle. They've probably found the picture from under my mattress, the semi-nude one. I smile as I think about it, the mere fact that I _actually_ drew that, despite never actually seeing her like that.

Haymitch pushes open the door and comes in just as I'm shading in the stubble on his chin in the tiny picture of him on my sheet of paper. He nods, impressed, and sits himself on the bed next to me, copying my stance. His back rests against the wall, his feet on the edge of the bed. "You hungry?"

Handcuffs are clipped onto my wrists and he guides me through the corridors. I have to stop a few times as we wind our way through the maze that is Thirteen- too many memories of the Capitol surfacing in my mind. He asks if I want to go back but I shake my head rapidly, pressing onwards.

The mouth-watering smell of beef stew fills my nose as we walk and Haymitch smiles as I pick up pace, walking level with him instead of several paces behind. He leads me to the hall and then goes up to the servers to explain something. They look at me, standing somewhat lost on the edge of the dining hall, and nod.

My still-cuffed hands weighed down by a tray of steaming stew, I leave Haymitch and begin to weave my way across the hall to where I see Delly, sitting with Finnick and Annie and Gale and Johanna and… Katniss. I take a total of three steps before two guards catch up with me- but they do nothing to stop me as I weave my way through the tables and come to a halt behind the empty seat next to Johanna- directly across from Katniss.

Finnick is telling some ridiculous story about a turtle stealing his hat when I approach, and despite the fact it's obviously being told for Annie's benefit, the whole table erupts in a burst of laughter. Her laugh cuts through me like a knife, the suddenness of like a gunshot to the brain. It's high pitched and breathy, and each 'ha' comes in a short crackly burst. She stops immediately when she opens her eyes and sees me standing there, my tray balanced on my fingertips and flanked by two guards, every eye in the dining hall staring at me accusingly.

"Peeta!" Delly waves from the end of the table, a huge grin stretched across her lips. "It's so nice to see you out… and about."

Johanna cocks her head to one side, the thin tufts of fluffy hair sticking up in all directions. "What's with the fancy bracelets?" I look down at the cuffs on my wrists and shift my hands slightly under the tray, the heat from the stew starting to radiate through the thick plastic.

"I'm not quite trustworthy yet. I can't even sit here without your permission." I nod my head at each of the guards, who explained the 'rules' on the way over.

"Sure he can sit here. We're old friends." She pats the space beside her and the guards nod as I sit down. Katniss stiffens and picks at a bit of carrot in the thick gravy, not raising her head to look at me. "Peeta and I had adjoining cells in the Capitol. We're very familiar with each other's screams." Annie, on the other side of Johanna, covers her ears and her eyes blank out. Finnick shoots Johanna a _very_ dirty look as he wraps his arms around Annie, drawing him close to her body. "What? My head doctor says I'm not supposed to censor my thoughts. It's part of my therapy."

As damaged as she is, with her bald head and scars over her shaking, drug-starved body, Johanna is still the same person she was when we met her in the Capitol before the Quarter Quell.

The table that was laughing and cheery when I walked over is now subdued. I pick up my spoon and try and figure out how to eat with my hands shackled so close together. Everyone pretends to eat whilst Finnick coaxes Annie out from her own little world. I scoop little chunks of beef up and have to raise both my hands to get the spoon near my mouth. Delly is the next one to talk, inappropriately bright- as ever.

"Annie, did you know it was Peeta who decorated your wedding cake? Back home, his family ran the bakery and he did all the icing." Annie looks around Johanna and finds my face, a smear of gravy at the side of my lip from where I caught it with the spoon.

"Thank you, Peeta. It was beautiful."

My heart warms at the thanks, the simple compliment at my days of slaving. "My pleasure, Annie." I soften my voice, not wanting to set her off again and upset Finnick, but also to show how sincere my acceptance of her compliment is.

"If we're going to fit in that walk, we better go." Finnick says from the end of the table, picking up both his and Annie's trays in one hand and walking across the hall, holding onto Annie tightly with the other. "Good seeing you, Peeta."

"You be nice to her, Finnick. Or I might try and take her away from you." It was meant as a joke, something to lighten the mood- but my cold tone just makes the air even denser and I look back down at my plate.

"Oh, Peeta. Don't make me sorry I restarted your heart." His voice is light, forgiving, but he still glances over at Katniss with worry in his eyes. The vegetables are salty and melt in my mouth as I crush them with my tongue, relishing as the meaty gravy swims between my teeth and over my tongue.

"He did save your life, Peeta. More than once." I feel the stew in my stomach threaten to come back up, guilt filling me up. Why must Delly point these things out?

"For her." I nod at Katniss, looking up from my plate just enough to see that her eyes are still focussed on her own. Gale scrapes the last of his gravy from his plate and shifts uncomfortably next to Katniss, the tension too much for him, too. "I don't owe him anything."

Katniss' head snaps up and I raise my head slowly to look at her, crushing a slice of potato against the roof of my mouth. "Maybe not, but Mags is dead and you're still here. That should count for something."

She's hit a nerve. My stomach twists, organs I didn't know I had twinging inside of me. "Yeah, a lot of things should count for something that don't seem to, Katniss. I've got some memories I can't make sense of, and I don't think the Capitol touched them. A lot of nights on the train, for instance." She flinches a little, but it's true- I _can't_ make sense of them. If she hates me so much, why did she repeatedly come into my room and crawl into my waiting arms?

I point to Katniss and to Gale with my spoon as I swallow a mouthful of stew. "So, are you two officially a couple now, or are they still dragging out the star-crossed lover thing?"

Johanna wiggles a little behind me and scoops another spoonful of gravy into her mouth. "Still dragging."

My hands tighten, the spoon clatters down onto the table. I spread my hands out on the wood and feel the guards tense behind me, ready to intervene. "I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it myself." Gale says, twirling his spoon between his fingers.

"What's that?" My face relaxes but the effort it takes to keep my voice level is great.

"You." His voice is cold, accusing. I don't like it.

"You'll have to be a little more specific. What about me?"

It's Johanna's turn to jump in now, obviously bored at being left out of the conversation for five minutes. I spoon another few slices of carrot into my mouth. "That they've replaced you with the evil-mutt version of yourself."

Me, the mutt? That's not right. Katniss is the mutt, not me. Well, she probably isn't really a mutt, but she's more of one than I am. Gale drains the dregs of milk in his glass and picks up his tray. "You done?" He asks Katniss, standing up. They walk away across the hall as I move the vegetables around with my spoon. How can _I_ be the mutt?

Delly slams her spoon down on the table and leans across the wood towards me. "She's been through just as much as you have, you know. In just the past few months she's been shot and bombed at. After the Capitol bombed the district she had a complete mental breakdown because of what they were doing to _you_! She realised that they were beating you up to try and break her, and it was too much for her. It was because of her that they decided to go rescue you, regardless of how many lives it might cost. And you know who was the first to volunteer? Gale."

Her voice gets higher and higher as she shouts at me across the table, coming up with seemingly endless reasons why it's wrong for me to treat Katniss the way I am. "She was _overjoyed_ when they rescued you, and you strangled her. Peeta, she loves you! Why can't you see that? It's so obvious! She actually wanted to be part of the rescue mission. She wanted to come and get you herself!" The whole dining hall is silent now but for Delly's increasingly high pitched screaming.

"And you know why she looks so tired now? She's spent all week working her butt off to catch up for all the training time she missed while she was ill! She endured _really_ painful treatment to fix her ribs quicker so she could train, just so she can be _considered_ for the team to go to the Capitol to get revenge on Snow. And you know why she's going through all of this? For you. Because if you two hadn't gone to the games then perhaps one day you would have spoken to her and you could have been together happily. She wouldn't have had to make the decision that both of you had to die because she couldn't bear going home without you. Even then, she loved you, even if you don't think she did.

"Don't you see? It's all for you. She is training to go to the Capitol and risk her life _yet again_ to destroy Snow, to get her revenge for what he did to you. One of the conditions of her becoming the mockingjay was that _you_ live. That _you_ be granted immunity. She traded her freedom, she faced her fears, in order to enable the attempt to rescue you from the Capitol, in order to try and take over the Capitol. And if you're too narrow minded and shallow to see that she really loves you, then perhaps she's too good for you and it's better off that she's with Gale."


	19. Chapter 19

The guards put me back in the room, unlock the handcuffs and then leave. I rub my wrists as I sit on the bed, stretching out my legs. Everything that Delly said- is it true? That she's doing all this for me?

My cheeks flush red as I remember the last few minutes- Delly storming off, me arguing to myself about whether the things Delly said were true and Johanna finishing off my stew. My stomach grumbles in protest, unhappy with the meagre payment of a few chunks of beef, a couple of slices of potato and the equivalent of half a carrot. I just hate being so confused about everything, so angry and conflicted about the slightest of things.

I punch the wall and feel the skin rip from my knuckles as I pound the tiles. It was a mistake for them to remove the padding. Finally, tiredness gripping my body and dragging me down, my blood and strips of skin smeared over the wall, I collapse on the bed and let the tears flow. Internally, the pain is made greater by the fact I'd promised myself not to cry anymore. The shame of breaking down like this, in front of everyone behind that window.

"It's a matter of days before they go to the Capitol, and we need some new propo shots. We've got Katniss and Johanna, Finnick and Gale and we've got Annie at the wedding, but the whole of Panem is questioning where you are. Where is the boy with the bread?" Haymitch opens up his arms and staggers around the room. "You're trapped down here, with those on." He nods to the handcuffs that are now on my wrists. "With those." He nods towards the door where two guards stand.

The door is always open now, and I can walk in and out whenever I like. I can talk to the people in the hospital and if the mood takes me I can go eat in the dining hall with everyone else- but outside of this room, I am always accompanied. Inside this room, I have all the freedom I could possibly ever hope to have in such a confined space.

"We _can_ let you outside to do training with the others. We'll film you and put the footage in a propo to be aired across Panem, and then… who knows, if you train enough you could be part of the mission to the Capitol to take out Snow." Haymitch stands in front of me, and it's different to how it used to be. Now that he's sober, now that I am essentially an orphan, he's kind of like a father to me. I think about all the wasted muscle, all the fat stolen away from me by the Capitol leaving me as a bruised and battered sack of bones. How great would it be, to build up all that muscle again and use it against them..?

"Okay."

Outside, the guards remove the handcuffs and guide me over to a group of thirteen-year-olds, who are busy doing push-ups in the dirt. Katniss is further along the line, with some slightly older kids. The Soldier ordering us about- Soldier York- watches me for a moment, then tells me to get up and puts me in with the older kids. Right at the front where I can be watched, where I can be filmed.

Sweat pours from my skin as I run around the field, on my third kilometre of the required eight. I jog past Katniss, her face scrunched up in pain, her fringe stuck to her forehead with sweat. In the afternoon, I am put back with the beginners to learn how to assemble and use a gun. It's like nothing I've ever used before and it takes several attempts before I even manage to assemble my gun, but shooting comes naturally to me. I miss the target the first time around, then lower my gun and press my eye against the sights. Once the crosshair is lined up with the target, I squeeze down on the trigger. The gun bucks backwards, slamming into my shoulder. The bullet soars across the gap between me and the target and hits the cut-out man square in the heart.

"Well done. Why, I might even consider moving you up a group." She's over from the intermediates, keeping an eye on me. She watches me shoot a few more bullets, one through the head where each of the eyes should be, and another right in the groin. "Sharp shooting there, Soldier Mellark."

In my cell, I practice doing push-ups and crunches. I perform handstands and headstands against the wall, take the thin mattress from the bed and use it as a mat on the floor. Talks begin to arise, possibilities of being moved to a compartment like the other citizens, but they're not satisfied with my roaming free yet. I'm still not trusted, still required to wear handcuffs for almost the whole time I'm out of this cell. In fact, the only time I don't wear them is when I've got a gun in my hand, and isn't that when I'm potentially the most dangerous?


	20. Chapter 20

I sit alone in my room, using my nails to pop the blisters on my hands from days of gun use. A noise echoes from the corridor and I look up just in time to see Johanna being wheeled in on a stretcher and transferred to a bed. They pull the blankets up to her chin and tuck her in, a morphine drip in her arm. The fresh tufts of hair on her head are damp and flattened to her scalp, and I know instantly what's happened. She did the exam, like Haymitch said. And then they got her with water. And she freaked out. And now she's here again.

And she won't be going to the Capitol.

I step out of my room and walk across the ward, the guards following close behind me. I kneel on the floor beside her bed and watch her face, scarred and not particularly peaceful, even in her sleep. Her eyes flicker open- obviously they didn't give her very much in the way of sedatives- and she turns her head to face me, her eyes suddenly wide. They're red and blotchy. Tear stained. Terrified.

"It's okay." Is all I manage to get out before Finnick bursts into the room and glares at me. I stand and raise my hands, backing off. "She's my friend too, okay. I care about her." I say as he takes the seat on the other side of her bed and starts massaging her hand, which is clenched into a fist. Her fingers open slowly, like a flower coming into bloom. I remember her screams from the Capitol, constant, reverberating down the corridors and then inside my head. No matter how hard I try to block them out of my mind, they always wind their way back into my memories.

I turn away from them and walk back across the ward to my room, closely followed by the guards. Even the slight squeak of my new sneakers on the linoleum reminds me of her screams, shouts, protests. Like her, my scars from the Capitol are more than physical.

When I look up from my pad, Johanna is alone again. I am about to get up to go see her properly when I spot Katniss standing at the door to the ward. She rests her head against the glass and pushes open the door, walking over to Johanna and pressing a small white bundle into her hand.

Johanna raises it to her nose and sniffs it, the smiles at Katniss and wipes her eyes. Under that hard, protective exterior, Johanna is just as human as the rest of us, just as damaged. My heart goes out to her, as I sit and watch from behind my eyelashes, my head still tilted towards the paper. Katniss looks up at me as I raise my face, sees the wobble of my lip as I struggle to keep my emotions in check. She smiles, slightly, when she sees me watching, but her lips fall from their slightly curved edges and set themselves in a straight line across her face, revealing nothing.

When I go to training, I am in the same group as Johanna. We shoot side-by-side, not quite good enough for the mission to the Capitol but not exactly terrible, not completely devoid of a chance to go with them. Her breakdown put her behind, my improving wellbeing allowing me to catch up and and keep moving forwards.

While we shoot and continue with the usual training scheme, Katniss and Finnick and Gale have a different training programme. We watch them longingly as we run laps, doing a brief one-hour warm-up and then spending the rest of training working on their shooting. And whenever they aren't out in the field with us, they're down in the Block, a fake Capitol street down in the depths of Thirteen that simulates the kind of dangers they will be faced with. We can just about see the block from here, see the group of people clad in uniform heading into the building then emerging into the sunlight on the other side some time later, covered in goo or choking on smoke. I want to be in there, get through there, face my fears and go with them to the Capitol. I need to.

On the day they ship out for the mission, I stand in the field with Johanna watching for the hovercraft. Soldier York shouts at us to focus several times, but upon realising what we're looking out for leaves us be. The hovercraft rises from the ground in the middle of Thirteen and flies over our heads. We kneel in the mud and watch as it shoots away through the sky. The moist ground soaks my knees and I find it almost impossible to gain the power to stand again. As Katniss flies away from me, I feel a little piece of my heart go with her.


	21. Chapter 21

Training continues, getting more intense as the days pass. My muscles come back and I start liking my body again, now healed of bruises and scratches and closer to how I looked in Twelve- but with a bit more meat on me as a result of better food. The fact that three meals a day can always be counted upon helps a bunch, too. Three days after the mission flies out, Solider York keeps me behind after training.

"Soldier Mellark. I have recommended that you take the exam, and you are exempt from following your schedule this afternoon so that you may complete it. Please report to me at exactly 1pm to begin your physical assessment."

"Schedule? What Schedule?" She grabs my arm and rolls up the sleeve of my shirt, examining my forearm.

"You should have a schedule here." She prods the skin and instead of her finger sinking into it like it would have done a few weeks ago, it hits muscle. "What do you normally do?"

"I just sit in my room and draw or work out." I shrug and she drops my arm. It falls to my side and I let it swing back and to for a while. This is it- my chance to prove myself! Of course if I pass, it'll mean leaving Johanna here... but surely she can survive here on her own. That pack Katniss made for her seems to be helping, at least.

"Very well. 1pm Soldier Mellark, my office."

I pass the first three parts of the exam easily, my physical strength far better than any of the others my age, the exam too easy to even comprehend. My dedication, my determination has paid off. When it comes to weapon proficiency, I hit every target perfectly. As I stand in the entrance to the block, waiting for the clock to count down to zero, I start thinking about Johanna again. They got her with water- but what is my weakness? What will they hit me with? I half expect an army of Katniss' when I step onto the street, and I'm not far off.

Gunfire rains down on me from the roof of a nearby building- I roll on the cobbles and shoot back, hitting the target and stopping the bullets. I turn a corner and start edging down a narrow alleyway, my eyes peeled for any kind of danger. Fog starts seeping into the alleyway through a grate in the ground and I rip my mask from my belt, pulling it over my face before it hits me.

Through the fog a figure starts walking towards me, and I raise my gun in defence. I stand perfectly still, assessing the situation before I continue. Just a metre away from the end of my gun, the fog lightens and the figure is revealed- Katniss. The test is to see how I react- whether I try and kill her or whether I can be trusted around her. I relax my muscles slightly but do not drop my gun, wary of the sudden apparition.

The fog clears and it's just me and Katniss in the alleyway. She puts a hand out to touch me and I raise my hand too, reaching for her fingers. I want to entwine my fingers with hers, to apologise for being so mean in the dining hall the other day. But as I try and grab her fingertips, my hand passes straight through hers- a Hologram. The devastation in my heart tells me one thing- that Katniss is in the Capitol, that I never apologised for the way I spoke to her and she could die at any moment. And I will never get to apologise for my actions, for treating her the way I have done- unless I beat this simulation. The Hologram flickers off and I continue to run, dodging gunfire and exploding pods. I leave the alleyway, coming out on yet another street, wondering how long the Block goes on for. More gunfire rains from one of the buildings and I hit the target with a single bullet, deactivating the pod and allowing me to continue. I leave the Block, pulling the mask off my face and inhaling lungfuls of the cool air outside. Soldier York pats me on the back and stamps my hand with a sickly purple ink. "Well done. Report to command."

I've never been to command and I'm not sorry- it's nothing particularly special and even more depressing than my tiny hospital room. I have to ask several members of 13 to find my way there, seeing as my guards have been dismissed and there's no signs around for security reasons. Coin, a stern looking woman with an impeccable haircut, sits behind a desk, examining a map of the Capitol on a panel on the table. She looks up as I enter the darkened room, staring me in the eye as I unzip my training jacket.

"Solider Mellark. Congratulations on your… ability. Of course there's one or two points in the Block that I could perhaps suggest improvement on, but for just over two weeks of training you truly are an exceptional young man." She points at a screen on the walls, which is showing a livestream of other soldiers fighting their way through the simulation. "And it is for that reason that we have decided to send you to the Capitol. In fact, just now it has been reported that a member of Star Squad 451 has been killed, and a replacement is needed. You will be that replacement.

"A cadet train is headed to the Capitol this afternoon with a squad of soldiers for the front line. You will be instructed where to dismount and directed to your squad. Head to the solider assembly point on the edge of the training field where you will board a train, and follow instructions at all times." She stamps the back of my hand with another rubber stamper coated in the same purple ink and practically pushes me from the room, shutting the door behind me.

As expected, the train pulls into the yard at the edge of the field where I'm waiting with a group of soldiers and cadets. I help them to load supplies into some of the carriages- cardboard boxes full of food and bottled water, bullets and guns and explosives, batteries and paper and pens and earpieces. Then I wander through the train, past compartments of strong and gruff soldiers until I find an empty one. It's got two bench-style seats, with impressively bouncy springs. Something about the musty smell of the seats, the dullness of the wood paneling and the rust on the windowsills tells me these carriages are stupidly old, perhaps Old World or at least possibly similar to the type used to transport the kids for the first few games, before the super-high-speed things used by the Capitol were introduced so widely.

As the last of the soldiers pile on board, each avoiding my compartment, the train begins to move. It shunts off down the tracks, gradually picking up speed until we're hurtling along. This ride is wreckless compared to that of the Capitol train, running on real tracks rather than almost hovering above them. This is probably what it feels like on the coal trains from 12. Felt like.

Because of the arrangement of cities, with the tracks spanning out in an almost spiral with the Capitol in the middle, our journey could take days. However to my pleasant surprise, we take a turn onto a seemingly disused line shortly outside of 13 and begin to hurtle on an almost straight run towards the Capitol. We pass 12, but it's on the horizon. It no longer smokes, no longer lives or burns. In fact, the only things that distinguish it as a settlement are the victors houses. They're the only things left standing, after all. Those and the fence.

Shortly after this I slip into sleep, lying down on one of the seats and closing my eyes, using my pack as a pillow. I even extract the sleeping bag they supplied me with and wrap it around my legs to shield me from the cool breeze streaming from the window. I almost fall off the seat as the train lurches to a halt, but I guess this is a good thing seeing as I actually wake up. All of my dreams and nightmares merge into one upon waking, the darkness of the arena and my time in the Capitol being swept aside by the memories of Katniss that the tests in 13 have returned to me. We are on the outskirts of the Capitol, waiting to be allowed through the rebel-controlled forces surrounding the outer-most fences of the city. When the train jolts forward, I stuff my bag back into my pack and sling it over my shoulders.

A station rolls into view and the wheels screech in protest. I leap off the train and roll my shoulder blades, stretching out my limbs after havinglay down in the same position for the past seven hours. I take a moment to relieve myself behind a dying tree on the station, grab a gun from the pile and hitch it onto my shoulder. As I stride across the dusty stretch of ground between here and the camp of Squad 451, I shake the bullets out of their box and slide them one by one, into the chamber.


	22. Chapter 22

The commander- Boggs, takes my weapon and walks over to the main tent to make a call. "It won't matter." I tell the rest of the group, matter-of-factly. "The president assigned me herself. She decided the propos needed some heating up."

When he returns, he sets up a two-person-around-the-clock guard on me and takes Katniss for a walk. They're only gone a few minutes before Katniss returns. She storms back to the camp as I set up my tent on the edge of the group, closely watched by various members of the squad.

"What time is my watch?" She asks Jackson, who is busy writing out a rotation of who is to guard me and when. It's nice that she uh, cares.

"I didn't put you in the rotation."

"Why not?" she demands. Her grey eyes seem to flash red but I push it out of my mind. She can guard me if she likes, not that I really need it. Why are they all so paranoid? I'm not going to kill anyone. It all still feels like it's orchestrated by the Capitol, all an elaborate plot to control me. I turn my attention back to the matter at hand.

"I'm not sure you could really shoot Peeta, if it came down to it." Shoot me? Why would I hurt anyone? I hardly know half of the squad and I don't really have anything against Finnick or Gale. Then I realise- all this is to protect Katniss, still. Her life is, and always has been, valued over mine.

"I wouldn't be shooting Peeta. He's gone. Johanna's right. It'd be just like shooting another of the Capitol's mutts." It hurts, hearing her say that. Knowing that she's more than ready to kill me. Somehow I think the guard should be for my protection, not hers. Suddenly the air is thick, and not just with the foul smelling pollutants of the nearby city or the sewage from camp. Not just with the smoke from weapons practice or the war taking place in the streets ahead. It moves in and out of my lungs like treacle, catching in my nose, my throat. Threatening to drown me, pull me back under. I gasp, taking in all the oxygen I can, just to stay afloat.

"Well that sort of comment isn't recommending you either," says Jackson, still scribbling names down on her clipboard. I finish knocking the pegs into the hard ground and walk back over to the team just as Boggs comes back over from the main camp.

"Put her in the rotation." He says, standing above Jackson and watching her scribble Katniss' name down on the clipboard.

She shakes her head as she looks back up to Katniss. "Midnight to four, you're on with me." It's a shame we can't have any time to ourselves, just the two of us. I mean, I know it's for her safety and judging by Katniss' earlier statement, for mine too, but what I would give to just have five minutes privacy with the girl on fire. A private conversation, for once with nobody listening in. It always seems like there's been someone there, listening to what I've said to her. In the interviews, the games, even back in District 12. Somebody else has always heard our voices. There's never been anything- _anything_- just for her ears, and this hurts me.

The dinner whistle sounds, a high-pitched shrill across the camp. All around, soldiers haul themselves to their feet and make their way over to the main tent to eat. Katniss turns on her heel and marches off across the dirt with Gale in tow. Finnick and Soldier Leeg walk either side of me as I walk over, my guard for the next four hours. It feels like nobody will ever trust me- I'll never have a private conversation with anybody. At least I can count on Finnick to be my friend here- I hope.

Squad 451 and the camera crew sit in a circle on the dirt near the tents to eat. When Gale and Katniss return, several cold looks are directed at her- for some reason beyond my imagination. There is an air of unease around, which blooms at her arrival, so I know it's because of her and not me, for once. She shovels her food into her mouth, chews it up and goes back to the main tent again to return her dish and complete her camp responsibilities. Night begins to fall and I stand to climb into my tent, but Boggs shakes his head. "You sleep out here, so we can keep an eye on you." Nodding reluctantly, I retrieve my sleeping bag and spread it out on the hard floor near the heater. Leeg crawls into her tent and her sobs fill the air- her sister was the solder that I replaced.

As I lie in the dirt and look up at the stars, it occurs to me that privacy in any way or form is a thing of the past. I won't ever, ever get to be alone except for in my mind. And with all that's happening and everything that's gone on, it's getting pretty crowded in here.

When Katniss returns, she looks sullen and also a little guilty. Like she's been caught doing something she shouldn't be. She clambers into her tent and sits up, looking at the canvas wall on the far side. Her silhouette shows through the thin green material from a dim light behind her tent, the torchlight of another solider. Maybe Gale or Boggs had a word with her and she's mulling it over or something. For a long while, I stare over at her shadow, remembering the way the pencil or the paints followed her curves, shaded her skin. If I had my pad with me, I'd try drawing her now, but that's a thing I like to do in private. Besides, 13 wouldn't let me bring my own paper. The only stuff we have here is the few leaves we brought with us- strictly for writing letters home to our families. If we have any.

Before Finnick turns in for the night, he crouches down beside me and presses a bundle of rope into my hand. It's frayed and soft with wear and it seems almost a wrench to him to give it to me. "It helps." He says, patting me on the shoulder and crawling into his canvas shelter. I sit up near the heater, knotting the length of rope with fumbling fingers. At midnight, Katniss crawls out from her tent with her sleeping bag wrapped around her shoulders to take her first watch with Jackson.

It's a whole hour before I think of something to say to her. I wrap the rope around my hands and speak softly as I look at her through the dull, flickering light. "These last couple of years must have been exhausting for you. Trying to decide whether to kill me or not. Back and forth. Back and forth." Her eyes widen and she opens her mouth wide to retort, then something stops her.

"I never wanted to kill you." She says, combing through her wavy hair with her dirty fingers. She's trying to be casual, but I can see even in the moonlight that her muscles are tensed with anxiety. "Except when I thought you were helping the Careers kill me. After that, I always through of you as… an ally."

"Ally." It makes my tongue move in a weird way when I say it, but I quite like the sound of it. "Friend. Lover. Victor. Fiancée. Target. Mutt. Neighbour. Hunter. Tribute. Ally. I'll add it to the list of words I use to try and figure you out." I wind the rope between my fingers, trying and failing to knot it again. "The problem is, I can't tell what's real any more, and what's made up." The camp is silent but for the breathing of the other soldiers, which then vanishes almost completely. I have the sinking suspicion that they're listening to every word we say. But who cares? Maybe this will help them figure me out. Maybe they'll trust me. Maybe they'll understand. Maybe.

My suspicions are confirmed as Finnick's voice sounds from inside one of the tents. "Then you should ask, Peeta. That's what Annie does."

"Ask who?" I say. "Who can I trust?"

"Well, us for starters. We're your squad." Jackson crosses one leg over the other as she leans towards me, a motion of friendship. She leans on her knees with her elbows in anticipation, perhaps waiting for me to ask something.

"You're my guards." I point out, inclining my head towards her and towards Katniss. I'm not going to give in, not yet.

"That, too. But you saved a lot of lives in Thirteen. It's not the kind of thing we forget." The camp falls silent again and I go back to knotting my rope.

A few minutes before four, I turn to Katniss- who is now lying under her sleeping bag and looking up at the stars. "Your favourite colour… it's green?"

"That's right." She pauses a moment. "And yours is orange."

Why would I forget something like that? But even as I think it I know it's true- I've forgotten. "Orange?" I look at the inside of my sleeping bag. Grotesque. I think back to the colour of those backpacks in the first arena. Vile. How could anybody at all like that colour?

"Not bright orange. But soft. Like the sunset. At least, that's what you told me once."

"Oh." I close my eyes to try and imagine the colour. It takes a few attempts but I find it in the recesses of my mind- a pumpkin, Effie's wig and then the orange of a sunset over district Twelve. "Thank you." I nod. Now I can picture it. It's not like the backpacks or carrots or pumpkins or my sleeping bag or even Effie's wig. It's like the muted tone that spreads across the sky as the sun vanishes beneath the horizon. It's... almost yellow, not bright but not quite a pastel shade. I can imagine the paints, back home.

"You're a painter. You're a baker. You like to sleep with the windows open. You never take sugar in your tea. And you always double-knot your shoelaces." I look down at my boots, still on my feet inside my sleeping bag. Double knotted. When I look up, Katniss is gone- back inside her tent.

_She's no idea, the effect she can have._

Apparently the same can be said about me.


	23. Chapter 23

The sun peaks over the horizon, casting long shadows of tents across the dusty ground. The crack of dawn. The morning whistle sounds out over camp and I crawl out of my sleeping bag, fully dressed. Accompanied by Gale and Boggs, I head for breakfast. The sky is a salmon pink, with grey clouds dotted overhead, though posing no real threat to us here. Right near the horizon, spikes of that orange shoot out from where the sun is poking from behind the city. Yes. It's beautiful. Like the flames that flowed from our capes in the parade leading up to the first games. I can see now, why I like it so much.

Breakfast itself is just grains and dried fruit- highly nutritious and non-perishable. Instead of risking disturbing the others, we stand inside the mess tent with the other soldiers and munch down our rations, washing away the dryness of our mouths with a glass of luke-warm chemical-tasting water. It takes all I have to keep it down, being reminded of the similar tasting water I consumed before we left the Capitol. Perhaps all the water contains some kind of drugs... but nobody notices.

We return to camp to find that everyone else has gone for breakfast. Jackson is the next to arrive back, and offers to take over so that Boggs can give up his 'babysitting' duty. Yeah. I sit on the ground and draw pictures in the dirt with a thin stick, stamping them out with my boots. What was the point in even sending me out here when we're not doing anything? I don't even have my gun, and I can pretty much guarantee that whenever I do get it back, it won't be loaded. At least, not with real bullets.

Gale, Finnick and Katniss go with the camera crew into the suburbs at the edge of the Capitol where the pods have already been cleared to shoot at some buildings for more propos. I'm still not trusted with a weapon, as suspected.

While they're gone, Jackson sits with me and together we invent a game to help me learn what's real and what isn't. The way it works is that I mention something that I think is real, and then other people tell me whether it's real or not real. But I know the people here won't be able to answer most of the questions I have, so I go back to drawing in the dirt.

When Katniss, Gale and Finnick appear on the horizon, Jackson turns to me and asks me to start asking questions. "When they get here, they can help." She says, looking down at the half-erased drawing in the dirt. Reluctantly, I nod and move closer to the group of soldiers. Katniss and Gale and Finnick are almost here by the time I think of a question that these people around me can answer.

"Most of the people from Twelve were killed in the fire."

"Real. Less than nine hundred of you made it to Thirteen alive."

"The fire was… _my_ fault."

"Not real. President Snow destroyed Twelve the way he did Thirteen, to send a message to the rebels."

Jackson rearranges the watches, so that I'm always with either Finnick, Gale or Katniss- someone I know personally. I ask the most trivial things, my mission to find all the missing jigsaw pieces to fill the puzzle in my mind.

Gale fills me in on most of the things in District Twelve- who people were, where they worked, whether they made it to Thirteen or not. Even the layout of the town, where certain shops used to be, where people used to live. All of these things I didn't realise I'd forgotten up until now. I remember the map of cards I'd lain out in my chambers in the Capitol. With my drawings in the dirt, added to by Gale, I piece together my district again in my mind. Piece together my home.

Finnick on the other hand helps me with both of my games. He mentored the kids from Four in my first games and in the second games was a tribute along with me, so he really knows his stuff. What happened, why it happened. Even the rebel plan to break us out of the arena, the stuff I didn't know while Snow held me captive. How they needed to save at least one of us- and how the Capitol reached me before the rebels could. It sounds as though they didn't even try- but I can't blame Finnick. I can't.

My interests- most of my questions, most of the missing pieces- they relate to Katniss. And most, if not all of these questions, cannot be answered by any of the others. Our exchanges are painful and slow, with me trying to work through my questions in a logical order and her struggling to understand my logic. But instead of jumping straight in with the big details, I ask her about the little things- the colour of her dress in 7 during the victory parade, her preference for cheese buns and the name of our maths teacher when we were little. It's a slow process, but I can't ask the big questions with so many people around, with so many pieces of the puzzle missing.

Again, privacy is something I really, desperately need. And something I- we- completely and wholly lack.

News reaches camp that Coin and Plutarch are unhappy with the quality of the propos, so the following afternoon the entire squad is recruited to stage a considerably more complicated one than simply shooting a whole bunch of windows. And, to my surprise, this includes me.

We gear up, piling on what feels like tonnes of protective armor, and head into the Capitol. A whole block that still has some active pods has been set aside for us to use, and the television crew have promised to add smoke bombs and gunfire sound effects to make the propo a lot more exciting for the people watching. It's like the training exercise in the Block in Thirteen- only with actual risk of death. And the fact we're doing this almost for the entertainment of the people of Panem. It's like the Games all over again. But with guns.

Boggs hands me my gun back, careful to tell me (in a very loud voice) that it's only loaded with blanks. The weight feels good in my hands regardless and I swing the strap over my shoulder. "I'm not much of a shot anyway." I watch one of the cameramen- the one Katniss taught to sing to the mockingjays. "You're an Avox, aren't you? I can tell by the way you swallow." I hesitate a moment while I consider what I say next. My eyes glaze over as I remember.

"There were two Avoxes with me in prison. Darius and Lavinia, but the guards mostly called them the redheads. They'd been our servants in the training centre, so they arrested them too. I watched them being tortured to death. She was lucky. They used too much voltage and her heart stopped right off. It took days to finish him off. Beating, cutting off parts. They kept asking him questions, but he couldn't speak, he just made these horrible animal sounds. They didn't want information, you know? They just wanted me to see it."

When I look up from the spot on the floor I'd been talking to, the whole squad is looking at me with open mouths. I wait for a reply, but silence is all I hear. "Real or not real?" Nobody answers. My heart feels heavy as I start to work it out for myself, tears pricking at my eyes once more. Don't cry, Peeta. You are not weak. "Real or not real?!"

Boggs sighs and puts his hand on my shoulder. "Real. At least, to the best of my knowledge… real." I sag under his hand, my shoulders dropping. Darius. While I didn't know him personally, I know Katniss did. I saw him around the District and he was always one of the nice ones. And of course, he stepped in to try and save Gale from the whipping before we got there- Katniss and I.

"I thought so. There was nothing… shiny about it." I wander away from the group, walking slowly and carefully in the direction we were headed before I started speaking. Fingers. Toes. Nose. Darius. One foot in front of the other. I count myself lucky I'm only missing one leg. You know, nowhere near what Darius lost to the Capitol. Most of his extremities, his genitals, his mind.

I stop at the entrance to the block we are about to take, waiting for the rest of the group to catch up. When they arrive, we gather around Boggs to go over our mission once more. The gunfire pod is a third of the way down, and we should be able to activate it by shooting at it. The next pod- a net- is at the far end. Boggs says it needs someone to set off the body sensor mechanism and everybody volunteers except me- I have no idea what they're on about.

Messalla, one of the members of the television crew, pats some powder onto Katniss' face for the inevitable and anticipated close-ups. We position ourselves according to Boggs' order and wait for Cressida and Castor and Pollux to get into position too- all the people whose names I've learnt over the past few hours.

Messalla sets off a few smoke bombs a few metres up the street, Cressida calls "Action!" and we all take a few tentative steps forward. I wait for my assigned section of windows to come into view and shoot towards it. The sound waves from my blanks alone blast the glass from the panels. At close range, they could probably do some damage. Maybe even kill, if aimed in the right places.

Gale shoots at the gunfire pod and I duck into a doorway as a wave of bullets soars down the street. Boggs orders us forwards but Cressida stops us so she can get close-ups of our reaction to the pods. Over and over again we have to re-enact falling into the doorways or flattening ourselves onto the ground, and over and over again Boggs has to remind the entire squad that this is serious business.

Boggs raises the Holo as we stand around in the street, waiting for him to check the next pod. He moves the gadget around to try and find the best light to view the map in, and takes a step backwards to keep his balance.

The air immediately fills with flames and smoke. The continuing laughter from the team turns to screams, the pink and orange cobblestone streets are suddenly stained red with blood. A second explosion sounds and all the remaining windows in the street blow out. I stumble through the smoke, which is burning my lungs and setting my throat on fire, until I find Boggs on the cobbles. Is this real? Is this part of a simulation, like in the Block? Of course not.

Katniss kneels hopelessly beside him, her hands covered in blood as she clutches his arm. His legs are gone, the smell of burning flesh in the air distinctly his, distinctly real. I almost throw up as I stumble back into the dark smoke, finding a doorway to push myself into. Is this what it was like in Twelve? Thousands of people died- thousands of people cremated or burnt or suffocated by the smoke and the flames caused by the Capitol. Caused by Katniss and myself, by the rebels. My family, my mother and father and brothers among the casualties.

The voices of the others sound loud now in the ringing silence. Jackson shouting into a communicator for medics, Finnick close by trying to revive Messalla, who by the sounds of it was thrown into a wall. The smoke begins to clear and I clamp my hands over my ears, scrunch my eyes up tight. I don't want. I can't. The stone wall behind me presses into my back as I bite down on my lip. I can't stay here.

I push myself up, my ears ringing. My hands clutch my gun for all I have as my legs numbly move towards my squad. A thick oily-looking substance begins to pour from the end of the street. Gale and Leeg take off, firing bullets at the cobbles, minesweeping. Attempting to deactivate each of the pods so we don't have another Boggs.

I find Katniss trying to haul the unconscious body of Boggs to safety. He won't live. I know it. Swaying, eyes wide, I slam the butt of my gun down towards her. I miss as she dodges and Mitchell takes me down, but the black stuff is approaching. I push Mitchell off me with my feet, launching him further down the block.

A loud snap sounds and cables rise up from between the stones, dragging up the net trap. Blood instantly leaks from his skin and drips to the cobbles below, and still the strange black fluid gets closer. Two dead or as good as and the rest of our squad to follow if we don't get out of here soon.

My lungs fill with the acrid smell of thick tar as the wave crests above the buildings. It begins to fall. Gale and Leeg shoot at the cables holding Mitchell and at the lock on the closest building.

Bodies pile on top of me, holding me down, too many for me to fight. Katniss grabs Boggs and hauls him into the unlocked house. The people on top of me- Castor and Pollux- get me to my feet and drag me in after him. I slip on the trail of blood. Jackson clicks handcuffs onto my wrists and I don't need these I really don't… I start sobbing and shouting and crying and they shut me into a closet in a vain attempt to get me under control.

I bury myself in the lush, furry coats within the cupboard, hoping to fall through the other side into some magical place without all this violence. I killed Mitchell. I killed him. It's my fault. Mine.

A door slams and people shout in panic. Windows shatter and still I bury myself deeper in the coats, pounding on the door with my feet.

Coughing sounds from the next room as Katniss screams out someone's name. I keep on pounding at the door as they talk, I need to escape. The walls start closing in on me and I want to scream but I can't find my voice. Nobody comes to the door, nobody cares about me. I whimper and stop kicking, drawing my knees up to my chest and pulling the coats down from the hangers, letting them fall on my head and not really caring if I live or die.

Commotion sounds from the next room but I'm under so many coats now it's muffled. My lungs ache from lack of air but I don't care anymore. They should just leave me here to die. It would be better, safer for everyone. Colourful spots appear on my closed eyelids until everything stops. Silence and darkness swallows me up and I fall into the heart of the Capitol, the bottomless black pit that I seem to have spent so long trying to escape, and am now attempting to infiltrate.

When I come to, I'm lying on a pale blue sofa in a heavily upholstered room in a different apartment to the one we were in a few minutes ago. The rest of the squad stand around the TV, watching a broadcast. Over their hushed voices, I discover that we are pronounced dead.

"So, now that we're dead, what's our next move?" Gale asks, looking over at Katniss. Finally, a question I can answer.

"Isn't it obvious?" Everyone turns around, guns and eyebrows raised. After my outburst, the rage and the attempt to kill Katniss- again- I know my answer is right. I know they will not hesitate, but do nothing to prepare myself for what is to come. Perhaps it would be better for me this way. My head still spins as I push myself up so that I'm sitting. I stare directly into Gale's face, begging him, pleading him. I helped Katniss to save him from the whip. It's his turn to save me. He owes me this, just this. And I want it. I know I do. To keep Katniss safe, to stop any more unnecessary deaths like that of Mitchell.

"Our next move… is to kill me."


	24. Chapter 24

"Don't be ridiculous," says Jackson. Apparently I was wrong, because the bullets do not come flying my way. I thought they'd do it in an instant, not argue with me! Can't they see I'm just going to continue to be a hindrance? I'm just going to continue to send people straight to their deaths!

"I just murdered a member of our squad." I shout, grief overwhelming me like when my parents died. Why don't they see that? I don't want to be responsible for any more deaths!

Finnick steps forward, his hand outstretched to show he means no harm. "You pushed him off you. You couldn't have known he would trigger the net at that exact spot." He says this slowly, in an obvious attempt to calm me down. It doesn't work. Tears trickle down my face as I divert my eyes to the floor. I sniff.

"Who cares? He's dead, isn't he? I don't know. I've never seen myself like that before. Katniss is right. I'm the monster. I'm the mutt. Snow has turned me into a weapon!" Just dispose of me. Kill me now, leave me here for the Capitol. I don't care. Just don't let me end up there alive, a prisoner again.

"It's not your fault, Peeta." Finnick is really close now, only a few steps away. His voice is soft, reassuring. It envelopes me, wraps around me and holds me together. He calms me down so much that all the fight disappears from me. I can't do it anymore.

"You can't take me with you. It's only a matter of time before I kill someone else." Everyone exchanges glances and I can just tell that they agree with me. The handcuffs still on my wrists say the same. "Maybe you think it's kinder to just dump me somewhere. Let me take my chances. But that's the same thing as handing me over to the Capitol. Do you think you'd be doing me a favour by sending me back to Snow?" I know everything now, all their little secrets, their plans. Besides, I don't want to go back there. I don't want to go through that again.

Tears run thick and fast down my face now, my features twisted in agony. "I'll kill you before that happens. I promise." Gale. I look up into his face, checking for lies. I shake my head. What have I done to him to deserve this? This promise... while kind... it's not enough.

"It's no good. What if you're not there to do it? I want one of those poison pills like the rest of you have." I know my request is insane, that they'll never allow me to have one. They're right, of course. If I had one, right now, I'd probably just pop it in my mouth and swallow it without question. I would.

"It's not about you." Katniss steps forward out of the group, back in her leadership frame of mind. She means well, I know it. She doesn't want me to die, or else she'd have someone shoot me right now. But why? Didn't I try to kill her just a few weeks ago? "We're on a mission, and you're necessary to it." She turns to the rest of the group. "Think we might find some food here?"

Half the squad stay behind with me while half search for food. My guards. Gale and Boggs and Castor and a couple of the soldiers from 13. The others come back with armfuls of cans and place them on the floor, and we all move to sit around them I wipe my tears away and pick up the can closest to my foot. The label reads 'lamb stew'. The two words seem to ignite some kind of neon sign in my mind and I nudge Katniss on the shoulder. Even as I look down at the shining silver in my hand I can taste it. It has the plums. Haymitch sent us some in our first games, when we were in the cave.

"Here." She flinches reflectively, then takes the can from my hands and reads the label. I'm right. I can tell by the way that her lips crumple and her face screws up a little. Her grey eyes shine with tears as she looks down at the can. Something so simple having such a huge effect on one person. Was it like this before, in 12? I don't think it was... what's changed?

"Thanks." She wipes her eyes and rips the ring pull on the top of the tin as I pick up some baked beans. "It even has dried plums." Her face breaks into a smile as she bends the top of the can and shovels a spoonful of cold stew into her mouth, relishing the taste. From then on she sits an inch closer to me, and she looks over at me from behind her dampened eyelashes every couple of spoonfuls. At least I've done something right today. I think.

We finish off the cans and are munching on some cream-filled cookies when the TV bleeps on again, showing pictures of the dead like they do in the Games. They start with the TV crew, then Boggs, Gale, Finnick, myself and Katniss. They don't bother with the soldiers from Thirteen, which affects me more than the fact I'm supposedly dead. Mitchell- he should be up there, on that screen. It's strange, seeing the report that I'm dead. For a short while, I'm immune. Nobody's going to expect me to be running around the Capitol with a gun slung over my shoulder and my stomach full of someone's food hoard.

Snow appears on screen, sitting in a huge chair behind his stupid podium. Back in that plush office, where we filmed the thing with the map. Where they beat me up. In my mind I can see the rest of the room. The tiled area by they towering bookshelves that they constructed that tiny stage on.

His lips are puffier than usual and his cheeks bright red, but he is still the horrific little man of my nightmares. He makes a big speech congratulating the peacekeepers for taking us out and talking about the future. He talks about Katniss, playing her down to be a simple minded law breaker, but I know she is much more than that. She is a leader, she is strong, and she is good. She... she is mine.

Thirteen takes over the broadcast and Coin flickers onto the screen, introducing herself and starting to talk about Katniss, making her sound like a better person than Coin herself believes she is. "I had no idea I meant so much to her," says Katniss, flatly. Gale laughs loudly and the rest of the squad look at them in silence while I continue to watch the screen. A picture of Katniss flashes up, heavily doctored but with no words or slogans- just her face, her blazing eyes. Flames flicker in the background and then envelope her, the screen fading to black and then the broadcast being handed back over to a very controlled-looking Snow.

"Tomorrow morning, when we pull Katniss Everdeen's body from the ashes, we will see exactly who the Mockingjay is. A dead girl who could save no one, not even herself." The seal comes onto the screen and the anthem plays, and then the TV flicks itself off again. We all sigh in relief. They really believe it. But they will go digging through the rubble- and they will only find Boggs. Poor, poor Boggs.

"Except you won't find her." Finnick murmurs, voicing what the rest of us are thinking. They'll know we escaped, and they'll start searching for us. They'll start looking for us.

"We can get a head start on them at least." Katniss says, standing up amongst the empty tins. She looks hopeless as she stares down at the Holo in her hands, bloody and useless. "Any ideas?" It's pretty obvious she has no idea how to use the thing, has no idea what we're even supposed to be doing from here on out. Do we head back to camp, where like in the rest of Panem we will be presumed dead? Or, do we carry on? Siege the city, take down Snow and hand over the control of Panem to Coin and the rebels?

Finnick is the first to contribute some sort of answer, "Why don't we start by ruling out possibilities? The street is not a possibility."

"The rooftops are just as bad as the street." Leeg says, sitting across from me with a half-eaten cookie in her hand. Of course. Before we even know where we're going we need to think of how, if we can even hope to find our way out. It's obvious though, isn't it? If we can't walk up the street and we can't run over the rooftops, well there's only one alternative.

They argue for a while, back and forth, until Gale seems to read my mind. "Underground," he says, dropping the last bite of his cookie into one of the empty cans and rubbing his hands on his uniform.

Mines. The underground Capitol prison. Thirteen. Everywhere is underground. I hate underground. But I'm right and so is he. It's the only way.

The rest of the squad dispose of the rubbish and cover up smears of blood and dirt on the sofas and floor. They pocket the tins that still have food in and bolt the front door to stop it swinging open, then turn to me.

"I'm not going." I cross my arms the best I can with my hands handcuffed so close together, and plant my feet firmly on the floor. "I'll either disclose your position or hurt someone else." Or end up back in prison, being tortured daily like Darius for no reason, for no gain.

"Snow's people will find you." Says Finnick, turning to face me, his face pale. Obviously at this very moment in time, in the height of a war, a moody out-of-his-mind teenage soldier is exactly what he wants. He's good at reading me. He knows I already know this. He knows what I need.

"Then leave me a pill. I'll only take it if I have to." I promise. There's something I just can't let go of. Some little reason in the back of my mind, some determination not to die.

"That's not an option. Come along." Jackson now, hands on hips. Demanding.

"Or what? You'll shoot me?"

We continue to argue back and forth for a few minutes, until I bury my face in my hands and end up agreeing to leave with them. It's easier to agree than to argue. It's possible that this has been their strategy for the past ten minutes. Just to tire me out so much that I give in and agree with them.

"Should we free his hands?" Leeg asks, pointing to the cuffs I'd almost forgotten were on my wrists.

"No!" I bring my hands close to my body and almost cradle the cuffs. They keep me sane, under control. With my cuffs, I can't hurt anybody. Only myself. They're on too tight, and everytime I move they cut a little more into my skin. Even as I stand here, they reopen a cut on my wrist and send a trickle of blood dripping down my arm. It begins to dry around the metal, crusting over it and fusing the cuffs to my skin. Everytime I feel I just can't do it, I twist my arms, breaking the skin around the cuffs once more. It keeps me here.

Katniss' thoughts seem to mirror my own as she takes the key for the cuffs from Jackson and slides it into her pocket. Maybe she understands how pain keeps you rooted. Of course she does. Once more, the girl on fire controls me. She has a choice in whether I live or die, whether I remain trapped here or go free.

We slide through a narrow air duct and break into the next apartment along. Then we find the second bedroom and go through to the door marked 'utility'. Inside is another door, with a hatch and a ladder leading down to the tunnels in the bowels of the city. Pollux, pale and sweaty, reaches out for his brother- who explains that Pollux used to work down here with other Avoxes before his family was able to buy his way up to ground level. Everyone stands in silence for a while, unsure of how to react until I turn to Pollux and put my hand on his shaking shoulder. "Well then, you just became our most valuable asset!" Castor laughs and Pollux manages a smile, and for a fraction of a second I feel normal again.

I trudge along beside my guards, Jackson and Gale. Pollux leads us through the labyrinthine maze and then after 6 hours of walking, finds a warm room full of softly humming machines and twitching dials. We have a rest period of four hours- and everyone seems thankful for it. Katniss squeezes herself into a gap against the wall, between an already dozing Gale and a sleepy-looking Leeg. Pollux sits himself in the centre of the room and lays his camera on the floor. When Jackson suggests he sleep, he signs to Castor, explaining that he'd rather stay on guard the whole night.

Jackson wakes Katniss up at six and she hauls herself across the room, sitting against the wall opposite the door, her feet inches from my head. She opens up a can of stew and scoops it into her mouth with the lid again, playing around with the Holo in a further attempt to make sense of it. She clicks around with Pollux for a while, then gives up and lets him fiddle around with it.

For a moment she rests her head against the wall behind her, and then she looks down at me and sees that I'm awake, watching her. "Have you eaten?" I shake my head and she hands me a can of some kind of soup with chicken and rice in it- keeping the lid to herself to stop me using it as a weapon- so I have no choice but to pour the sickly yellow mixture into my mouth. I wouldn't want to hurt her anyway. After Mitchell, I'm done hurting people. I don't think I could even kill Snow, if it came to it. Could I?

"Peeta." I drop the can from my mouth and wipe my lips. "When you asked about what happened to Darius and Lavinia, and Boggs told you it was real, you said you thought so. Because there was nothing shiny about it. What did you mean?"

I run my fingers over the edge of my lips to make sure no traces of soup remain, then trace the rim of the empty can. "Oh. I don't know exactly how to explain it. In the beginning, everything was just complete confusion. Now I can sort things out. I think there's a pattern emerging." I rest the can on the floor and adjust my position, so I'm sitting cross-legged in front of her. "The memories they altered with the tracker jacker venom have this strange quality about them. Like they're too intense or the images aren't stable. You remember what it was like... when we were stung, in the first arena?"

She nods. "Trees shattered, there were giant coloured butterflies. I fell in a pit of orange bubbles." A moment passes as she considers her words, thinks back. "Shiny orange bubbles. And when you told me to run... your skin seemed to sparkle in the sunlight."

"Right." I rest my hands as close to my knees as I can and then move them to my lap and then grab my ankles, unsure of where to put them. The chain clanks when I move, but it's still reassuring. The metal digs into my skin, cutting me again. The pain drags me away from the possibility of sinking into my memories again. "But nothing about Darius or Lavinia was like that. It was very... real."

"Well that's good, isn't it?" She asks. "If you can separate the two, then you can figure out what's true."

"Yes. And if I could grow wings, I could fly. Only people can't grow wings." Despite the obscurity of the statement, I'm still not sure. I turn my head to look at her, properly now and not just out of the corner of my eyes. "Real or not real?"

"Real. But people don't need wings to survive." Real, but...

"Mockingjays do." I pick up the can again and drain the last few dregs from the bottom, my stomach growling. She looks at me for a moment, her eyes finding mine yet again. The cold rice slides down my throat. It feels thick, slimy and constricting. Like tar or treacle. Like the truth.

Her eyes drop to the floor, like she's avoiding something. No, like she knows I'm right but doesn't want to face it. "There's still time. You should sleep." Instead of resisting, I lie down and rest my head on the hard floor, turning my gaze away from her to look at a twitching dial on one of the control panels. Slowly, she reaches out and puts her hand on my head, gently, like a butterfly landing on my skin.

I freeze in shock, but do not recoil. Her warmth transfers to me as she strokes my hair with her thumb, brushing it back over my forehead. I relax, letting my body melt into the concrete floor. "You're still trying to protect me. Real or not real?" My voice breaks a little as I try to keep it quiet, louder than a whisper but softer than speech.

She breathes in deeply and stops stroking my head, but keeps her hand in place. Gentle, not restraining. Affectionate. "Real. Because that's what you and I do. Protect each other." She goes back to stroking my hair and I let my eyes drift close, eliminating the sudden burning sensation that crawls over my retinas. After a minute, the foggy tendrils of sleep reach up and drag me down into my nightmares.


	25. Chapter 25

In my nightmares, the things I try so hard to escape in my waking hours come pounding towards me. They're not held back by the restraints of consciousness. No, they're free to roam, free to attack me and hold me down. And I can never wake up from them, so I'm trapped until someone else wrestles me awake or my brain just can't sleep any more.

The wolf mutts in the arena, whispering her name over and over again.

The monkeys.

The jabberjays.

_Katniss. _

_Katniss._

Monsters I've never seen before, calling her name, calling to me.

_Katniss. _

Their voices reach into my mind and escape through my lips, the hisses making my tongue tingle.

That one word, echoing through the tunnels of the underground network and drilling itself into my brain.

_Kill. Katniss. _

_Kill. Katniss._

My eyes snap open and I sit up, searching for Katniss. I find her behind me, her bow raised, pointing at me. "Katniss!" She lowers her bow a little as she sees the startled look in my eyes, hears the urgency of my voice. "Katniss! Get out of here!"Surely she must see this I care, that the whispering was not me!

"Why? What's making that sound?"

"I don't know. Only that it has to kill you. Run! Get out! Go!" She relaxes her bow string and turns away from me to face the rest of the squad. It's just like in the first arena, all over again. Me telling her to run, trying to save her, and she hesitates! Cato could just come around that corner right now and stab me in the leg again. Would she care?

"Whatever it is, it's after me. It might be a good time to split up." She says, looking around at the crew. Whatever she's doing, she's wasting time.

"But we're your guard," protests Jackson, slinging her gun over her shoulder. For someone so against venturing into the city early she's certainly very willing to risk her life now.

"And your crew," adds Cressida, holding her clipboard to her chest.

"I'm not leaving you." Gale says, his gun held tight in his hands. Suddenly I realise how important it is that I'm still alive- if they'd killed me when I told them to they wouldn't have had any warning about the monsters snaking their way through the pipes to kill us. I also see the determination in his grey seam eyes. Maybe he is made for Katniss.

Katniss looks around at the crew, her eyes filled with sadness as she takes into account how many of these people will die protecting her. She takes one of Finnick's guns and hands it to Castor, takes my gun from the floor beside it and loads it with a real cartridge before handing it to Pollux. Gale and Katniss give their guns to Cressida and Messalla and show them how to pull the trigger- all they'll need to know at close quarters. And then it's just me without a weapon, just me taking my chances with whatever mutts Snow has set on us. Just me who isn't trusted enough to protect them, to protect myself. Katniss picks up the cans and quickly sweeps the floor with her eyes for any other evidence we may have been here, then nods to Pollux to lead us out again. Before she leaves, she sticks the cans behind one of the machines. Not perfect, not by a long shot, but a lot better than carrying them with us.

As I step through the door, I think about what we could be about to face.

Snow. Mutts. Katniss. Me. Monkeys. Wolves. The various atrocities conjured up to murder tributes in other games.

We could be up against anything- though most likely whatever Snow thinks will scare Katniss most. So really, just about anything.

We cover three more blocks in good time before the screams start. Animal noises, choked and agonising, bouncing off the walls and engulfing us as we trudge through knee-high water in a drainage pipe.

"Avoxes." I blurt out, the instance the sound hits my ears. "That's what Darius sounded like when they tortured him."

I look over at Pollux and see his face pale. Of course. He knows that that's what he'll sound like too. That's what Castor will have to hear if he dies. We press onwards.

Cressida says something, but I'm not really listening. Leeg and Gale join in the conversation, discussing something about them not really wanting Katniss, just anyone they come across. They're probably right. My mind zooms back into focus as Katniss says something about going to lead them off, but not because of her speech- because of something else, something sinister.

"Listen." I murmur. Nobody hears me, still arguing about wasting time, in itself wasting time and giving off hints as to our location.

"Listen!" I whisper again, harsher this time. They shut up and look around them as they hear what I am hearing. Fear slowly emerges on each of their faces, realisation dawning on each of them. The screams have stopped, replaced by the constant, louder hissing of "_Katniss_" over and over again, all around us. Above us, behind us, below us and to the left and right. And even ahead of us, though not as loud, not as close.

Katniss nudges Pollux and as a single entity, we begin to run, our feet pounding on the damp concrete tiles. A sweet smell rises up from a stairwell on the left and Katniss begins gagging. "Masks on!" Jackson yells, but nobody raises their masks- there is no need for them. I know that smell, after all the time spent with Snow it's impossible not to know it. Roses.

That's her weakness. Not monsters, but that delicate flower. Like in Snow's rose garden, like the one he always wears in his lapel. But of course- Katniss has a connection with flowers. From Rue and Prim right through to Snow's roses. Always with the threat of death, and while death itself doesn't scare Katniss, it's leaving behind her family and people she cares for that does.

She swerves away from the smell and stumbles onto the Transfer. As she runs across the pastel cobbles, she uses her bow to shoot at the first pod, and it explodes with the odour of smoking rat flesh. When she reaches the next intersection, she pauses and shouts at us all to stay with her. Our location is known anyway, we just have to outrun them.

"Katniss!" Finnick shouts, and she turns around. Gale shoots two arrows at a wide shaft of golden light, inside of which floats Messalla. Even as we watch, his flesh starts to melt from his bones like the wax of a candle, dripping into a pool on the floor. My insides rise up and threaten to spew out of my mouth as I start shoving people forward.

"Can't help him!" I scream, pushing Gale in the small of his back. "Can't!" Katniss is right in front of me, staring horrified at the skeleton hanging in the light, even the bones now starting to melt. I touch her shoulder and she seems to come back to her senses, sprinting after the others to the intersection. The amount of people I have seen die in the past few years is too great, too many. There can't be any more. Not if I can help it.

Gunfire brings down plaster from the ceiling and Katniss looks about for a pod- not yet seeing the army of Peacekeepers sprinting down the Transfer towards us. Blossoms of red stain their pristine white uniforms as the star squad fire back, and I stand hopeless waiting for the horror to end. Almost all the Peacekeepers have fallen to the floor when more pour in from the sides and my mind cripples. We've lost. We're going to die.


	26. Chapter 26

Katniss freezes as the pungent smell reaches our nostrils and it's only me that understands. The roses. But while a rose is relatively pleasant to look at, the creatures advancing towards us are the complete opposite. White and naked, reptilian and utterly repulsive. They munch on the Peacekeepers, ripping the heads of both living and dead with gaping mouths. It's seconds before they're all down, every single one of them dead. The mutts fall to the floor and for a split second I let my hopes rise… and then they start to scuttle towards us on all fours.

"This way!" Katniss screams, hugging the wall and making a sharp turn to avoid another pod. When we're all pressed against the wall, she fires into the intersection. Gigantic metal teeth chew at the stones and for a second I feel myself compelled to jump into them, to just end it all, but Jackson and Gale have hold of my arms, pinning me to the wall.

It's impossible to hear the next thing Katniss says above the grinding of the teeth, but she and Pollux start running along the edge of the transfer and through a doorway. I break away from Gale and Jackson and sprint after her, just as desperate to escape the tunnels, to survive the mutts. We crawl through a tight concrete pipe onto a thin ledge above a toxic mix of human waste and chemical rubbish a metre below. Parts of the streaming liquid are on fire, green bubbles rise to the surface and burst, expelling noxious gases into the tiny chamber.

We run along the ledge as fast as we can, crossing a narrow bridge and coming to a halt in an alcove on the other side. Pollux motions to a ladder and Katniss looks around, checking who is here and who isn't. "Wait! Where are Jackson and Leeg One?" I look around too, and indeed they are nowhere to be seen. Why can they sacrifice themselves while I can't? Then I remember. She needs me.

"They stayed at the grinder to hold the mutts back." A man called Homes says, his face grave. My stomach churns and I have to swallow hard to stop the chicken and rice soup from joining the river of toxic waste below us.

"What?" Katniss lunges past me but Homes grabs onto her shirt, holding her back.

"Don't waste their lives, Katniss. It's too late for them. Look!" I shake my head rapidly, biting my lip. I don't want to accept it- no more deaths! Please! The mutts are slithering from the pipe onto the ledge and this time I can't help but let the contents of my stomach go over the ledge. Gale shouts something over the sound of my vomit and shoots an explosive arrow at the bridge, ripping it from the far side. Just as the mutts reach it, the metal grill sinks into the bubbles below.

The mutts almost scream Katniss' name as everyone with weapons starts firing into the increasing crowd. Hundreds of bullets sink into their flesh but only a few drop dead, and still more pour from the pipe.

She stands frozen on the ledge, looking out over the ever increasing crowd of mutts. I run forwards and grab her, picking her up as she fires an arrow at a mutt as it claws her ankle. "Climb!" My throat is hoarse from screaming, the one word tearing my flesh to pieces as I shove her against the ladder. She needs to do this. She can't let go, not like I did, not like I want to do.

She has to do this for all of us.

For 12, for 13, for the rebels.

For Panem.

The metal rungs are slick with slime and sweat, making them slippy as we scramble upwards. We reach a ledge and Katniss pulls Cressida and I up off the ladder. She starts to clamber back down the ladder again but Gale is coming up now, shouting at her to climb. After she hauls him up onto the ledge, she looks back into the gloom for any others. A quick head count tells me who is down there before she realises. My heart sinks to somewhere in the region of my stomach, because I know who it is, and I know it's too late for them.

"Someone's still alive!" She pleads, as screams bounce off the walls of the chamber and reach our ears

"No Katniss. They're not coming. Only the mutts are." Gale's words speak to me as much as they do Katniss and I say my goodbyes in my head, thank him for everything he's done for me. Keeping me alive in the arena, handing me the rope, sticking up for me, persuading me to want to live. Katniss grabs Cressida's gun and shines the light down into the chamber. Her eyes go blank as she watches the horror unfold in the spotlight- Finnick screaming and struggling to hold on as three mutts tear at his flesh. A mutt yanks back his head and lunges his jaws down on his neck. Blood spurts everywhere, spraying the tunnel and coating it with a sticky red layer.

Her chest rising heavily, she herself struggling to hold on, she takes the Holo from her belt and says 'nightlock' three times over, dropping it into the chamber below us. We press ourselves against the wall as the explosion rocks the platform and bits of mutt and human flesh rain down on us. Finnick's blood coats my skin now, sticks in my hair. My stomach churns and whatever is left of the chicken and rice soup threatens to spill from my guts once more. I swallow it down and wipe blood splatters from my eyes, wiping my hands on my saturated trousers. I have to hold on now. I have to.

Pollux slams the cover down over the pipe and I press myself against the wall, holding my clenched fists to my face to hide the madness within. Too many people have died and it's my fault- I don't have a weapon to use help fight so they have to try and save me as well as themselves because I can't defend myself…

"Peeta?" Katniss' voice breaks through the waves of grief as they ripple over my body. She kneels in front of me and pulls my hands from my face, heaving against the force of my arms as she wrenches them towards her. "Peeta?" Her face swims into view through the blurriness and my face crumples as I see the danger I've put her in, see what she's been through for me.

"Leave me," I whisper, my throat still hoarse, my words choked by shock and grief. "I can't hang on." I admit, looking away from her in despair.

She rests her hand on my blood-smeared cheek and strokes my face with her thumb. "Yes. You can!" She rests her other hand on my shoulder, rubbing her fingers back and to, her forehead close to mine so she can look me right in the eye.

"I'm losing it." Shaking my head, I fight against Katniss' grip to hide my face once more. "I'll go mad. Like them." Like the mutts, a beast, ever hungry for blood, for death.

"You can do it, Peeta. Do it for me." The others in the room seem to melt away, and it's just the two of us. I swallow, choking back sobs and keeping my tears in check. It takes all my willpower to just nod, not to push her away and curl up in the corner again. I have to do this now. There's no turning back, there's no way this can ever change. I have to do this, if not for me then for her, and if not for her then for Panem.


	27. Chapter 27

She closes her eyes and exhales, then leans into me and presses her lips against my mouth. She does not shy away at the lasting taste of vomit, does not relent. Chills run up my spine as she presses harder, desperate. And then she moves away an inch to breathe. She runs her hands down my arms to clutch my hands, interlocking our fingers and pressing her forehead against mine even harder.

"Don't let him take you away from me." Memories flash through my mind- Jackson's grip on my wrist, just seconds before I broke away and she gave up her life to save us. Leeg too, giving herself up for us, the bomb blasting away Boggs' legs. I shake my head to try and erase the images but they keep coming, past Finnick as he screamed and was torn to shreds, Darius as the Peacekeepers cut away at his flesh. _"You must hate her."_ The whisper in my mind, memories of Snow, the words of the Peacekeepers.

"No… I don't want to…" I can't think, I can't breathe. There's only one thing I know in this confusing world of darkness and pain and loss, and that is that I love Katniss Everdeen. I have always loved Katniss Everdeen, and I always will. The Capitol can take away my leg, my sanity, my life. But they can never take her away from me. That's what I'm sure of.

She grips my hands so tight I feel my blood vessels burst under her thumbs. Her face still inches from mine, her eyes all I can see. "Stay with me." She says, transferring her grip of my hands to one of her own and lowering them from my face as images from the past flash before my blank, unseeing eyes. As her thumb strokes my cheek, I start to relax. The shaking stops, exhaustion taking over. "Katniss." I murmur, weakening under her resolve, melting at her touch. This is the girl on fire, and I love her.

A memory from ages ago, before the second games. She'd been hunting, the fence becoming electrified while she was in the forest. On her return she jumped from a tree into a pile of hard snow and broke her heel. She hobbled back into her house to find a bunch of peacekeepers present, along with Haymitch and I, and hobbled along normally to sit down, sending a pleading message to her mother through her eyes.

All the pain she went through, just to feed those poor begging mouths of the starving children in Twelve and later, when she told me, Bonnie and Twiss. And then when her heel was strapped up and her mother had given her some sleep syrup, I carried her up the stairs in my arms and lay her in her bed. And she asked me to stay with her. And I held her hand, not letting go until she was well and truly under.

"Always." I gasp, remembering the scene perfectly, knowing my answer. Knowing how much I mean to her now, finally realising that possibly, she has grown to love me too.

Katniss asks Pollux how close we are to the street, and he motions upwards with his finger. It's now that I truly open my eyes and see how few of us remain, how many of us have fallen. Gale, Pollux, Cressida, Katniss and myself. Five remaining out of how many? Five left against the Capitol. Five left to take down Snow. Katniss grabs my wrists and pulls me to my feet, still standing close to me like she's afraid to leave my side. Still protecting me. She hesitates a moment, then scuttles up the ladder pressed against the wall, emerging in the utility room of the house above.

When the rest of us emerge from the pipe, we find the owner of the house lying dead on the floor, an arrow through her heart. Katniss stands white-faced in the bathroom, staring down at her for a minute before she runs from the room, bow raised, to search for other occupants. I know what it's like to kill innocent people, but this kill will just be one more marked on Katniss' record. One more on the ever expanding life of people who have died at her hand. Something about her shaking shoulders and trembling fingers confirms what I already know. It doesn't ever get any easier.

We move to the sitting room and I take a seat on the red velvet sofa in the corner, hugging a pillow and shoving it in my mouth to stop myself from screaming. Why must so many people die in order to achieve peace? Pollux leans against the mantle-piece and sobs against the wood, mourning the loss of his brother, lamenting the loss of his fellow Avoxes. Gale's tanned face is pale from blood-loss from the wound in his neck and Cressida doesn't look like she should still be on her feet, and Katniss is looking just as ebbed as the rest of us.

None of us should be here. Katniss and I, we're just teenagers. Gale is just barely an adult, could still pass for a kid, really. But all of us look older, scarred and maimed and traumatised by everything, everything that we've seen and gone through. I can practically feel the hairs on my head turn grey, almost sense the wrinkles forming across my skin, like each kill that I've had a part in adds a year onto the life I've lived. Like each death adds an extra weight onto my shoulders, an extra burden for me to carry. Like each murder has ripped apart my soul, and the spaces in between have been filled with tonnes of pressing guilt.


	28. Chapter 28

Katniss wanders into a bedroom and finds a goldmine of clothes for both men and women. She tells the others to dress and approaches me with the key to my handcuffs. Panic rises in my throat, stinging and acidic against the raw flesh like the chicken and rice vomit. "No. Don't. They hold me together." I beg, catching sight of myself in the bedroom mirror. My skin is filthy, caked in drying blood and dirt. The bottom half of my trousers is soaked in blood and drainage water, the skin around my wrists bloody and dirty from the handcuffs.

"You might need your hands." Gale's face is getting paler by the minute, but his grey eyes show only concern for Katniss. And he wants to help me, because helping me will ultimately make Katniss happier.

I clutch my wrists close to my body, shaking my head again. "When I feel myself slipping, I dig my wrists into them. The pain helps me focus." Katniss' face shows defeat as she reaches into the wardrobe of women's clothes and starts pulling them on over her filthy uniform. She takes off her boots and ties them around her neck by the laces, then does the same to mine seeing as I can't with my hands handcuffed.

Finally, wearing layers of silly bright clothes and coats, stupidly long shoes and long silky scarves around our faces, we are almost ready. We smear our dirty faces with layers of makeup and slide sunglasses on over our eyes, pulling on wigs to hide our hair. Unrecognisable, we scurry around the apartment and gather a mix of food and first aid supplies. Our pockets weighed down, our uniforms and faces concealed, we prepare to leave.

"Stay together." Katniss says, placing her hand on the doorknob and pulling the door open. Flurries of snow fall as crowds of people swim past us. A crowd of Peacekeepers pass us and my heart leaps, my mouth instantly drying. We leap out of their way like the rest of the Capitol citizens and then freeze as sirens fill the cool winter air. Our faces flash up on television screens up and down the street, an emergency report flashing up our photos along with those of Castor, Finnick and Jackson.

I'm not listening to the others as we weave our way through the crowded street, through some gates and into a musty shop filled with stacks of fur underwear. A grotesque woman with a stripy face steps out from behind a counter and exchanges a few words with Katniss and Cressida, working out some kind of arrangement. Katniss walks behind a rack of fur leggings and vanishes. Panic fills me- it's a trap. This woman will call Snow and we'll all die here for sure.

And then Gale is pulling on my arm, dragging me across the shop and behind the leggings, down a narrow staircase into a small dimly-lit basement. A panel slides shut behind us and that's it- we're dead. We're trapped, stuck here while Snow sends his people to come and get us.

I slide down against the wall of the stairs while Katniss, Cressida and Pollux make a bed of pelts for Gale to lie on. They clean and stitch up the gaping wound on his neck while his face contorts in agony and he steels himself against the pain. He doesn't scream.

Cressida and Pollux make more fur nests and Katniss comes over to me with a small tub of clean water. She gently washes away the blood and rubs a numbing cream into my skin, bandaging my scarred wrists beneath the tight cuffs. "You've got to keep them clean," she says, still holding onto them but not shifting her gaze away from my chest. "Otherwise the infection could spread and-"

"I know what blood poisoning is Katniss." My eyes fall downwards, my gaze landing on the ankle of my artificial leg, which pokes out from the end of my trousers. "Even if my mother isn't a healer." Memories of the first games come back, lying helpless in the dark cave as Katniss tentatively presses my leg around the stab wound from Cato's sword. I look up at her blushing face through my eyelashes. She's thinking it too.

"You said the same thing to me in the first Hunger Games. Real or not real?"

"Real. And you risked your life getting the medicine that saved me?" I raise my head fully to watch her face for any hint that she might be lying.

"Real." She shrugs and runs her arm down my arm. My skin prickles under her touch but it's a nice feeling, warming my blood instead of chilling it. "But you were the reason I was alive to do it."

"Was I?" A memory surfaces but it has that shiny quality to it, that… indication that something about it was altered. I press my wrists against the handcuffs and my whole body tenses as I fight off the rage which threatens to take over. All my energy goes with the rage as it vanishes into the air, fought off again. "I'm so tired, Katniss."

"Go to sleep." She pulls the brown wig from my head and rubs my hair softly, but I shake my head.

"I can't." I lift my handcuffs and tell her to secure me to the staircase, so that I'm not going to kill anyone if a memory resurfaces, one that I can't contain. Her face is full of pity as she hooks the chain through the hole in the slats in the banister and slides a long stick through the chain. Exhausted, I slump against the wall and close my eyes as she walks away. Sleep takes me in less than a minute.

It's early afternoon when I wake up to find Katniss, Cressida and Pollux still fast asleep. I shift on the floor and groan at the aching muscles in my arms. Gale watches me through droopy eyes, still recovering, but they snap shut when he notices me watching. My eyes drift shut again as I rest my forehead against the wall, fighting grief once more.

In mid-afternoon, the others begin to stir. They offer me food but I turn it down, the memory of the stinging chicken and rice making its way back up my throat still too fresh in my mind. I'm only half listening while Katniss discusses her plan, how she never intended for all these people to lose their lives. Of course she didn't- she wasn't raised in the Capitol.

"What do you think, Peeta?" I say the only thing that comes into my hand, the one sentence I can always use to describe Katniss.

"I think… You still have no idea. The effect you can have." I pull myself into a sitting position, moving my arms to rest on top of my head and stretching my legs out. "None of the people we lost were idiots. They knew what they were doing. They followed you because they believed you really could kill Snow."

Something in my voice seems to relight the fire inside of her, because she reaches in her pocket and takes out the paper map all the soldiers were issued with, and shows it to Cressida. "Where are we?"


	29. Chapter 29

The others wrack their brains for a plan to kill Snow- Tigris' shop is only five blocks away from the centre of the Capitol. In theory it'd be easy. Sneak over there in the dead of night, find a way into his mansion, track him down and send an arrow straight through his heart. But of course life isn't simple. Something this big would never be this easy. Not unless Snow wanted it, of course. And knowing Snow, knowing his power over Panem and his determination not to relinquish it... It's not going to be that simple. I therefore choose to sit in silence, contributing small additions they could make, problems with their plans that could end badly. No Gale, you could not just run straight in there. He has hundreds of guards and there's one of you, and even if you were any better than them, you have a limited supply of arrows while they probably have a lot more in the way of ammo. No Katniss, there's not going to be an underground passage directly into his mansion. Into the prison, possibly, but that maze is impossible to navigate unless you work there and I'm pretty sure even some of the peacekeepers struggle.

After supper, Katniss changes my bandages and handcuffs me back to my support before curling up and falling asleep. At some point during the night, Gale shuffles across the floor and comes to sit beside me against the railings. I can't sleep tonight, the plans from earlier still whizzing around in my brain, the whole danger of this situation still jolting me awake everytime I even so much as close my eyes.

"Thanks for the water." I tell him as he lowers the glass from my lips. His neck is stiff with bandages, but they're clean and he's probably not going to lose his head. We're only still here for his well-being really, but I don't tell him that. He's a good person, is Gale. Ultimately.

"No problem." He rubs his hands and pulls his legs up to his chest. "I wake up ten times a night anyway." He runs his fingers gingerly over the white cloth on his neck, feeling the dip where the mutts took out a chunk of his flesh. His hands shake as he folds his arms across his chest, resting them on his knees.

It's obvious we don't sleep for the same reason, but there's something else neither of us particularly wants to admit to eachother. We've become friends of sorts, me and him. Neither of us wants to ruin that now, to throw our companionship away just as we're getting used to it. "To make sure Katniss is still here?"

"Something like that." We sit in silence for a while, each taking in the fact that this is the first time we've ever actually sat and talked properly. He taught us to set snares before the second games and though we didn't use the knowledge he gave us, those few lessons gave me an insight into the mind of Katniss' '_cousin_'. We're not that different, Gale and I.

"That was funny, what Tigris said- about no one knowing what to do with her."

"Well, _we_ never have." I laugh and he laughs with me and it's almost like we're friends. I realise I wouldn't really mind it if we were. We could have been too. If it weren't for the games. If it weren't for my feelings for Katniss- which by the way- are still very conflicted.

"She loves you, you know." I turn to face him in the darkness, lowering my voice. "She as good as told me so after they whipped you." That's one of the memories that was already bad enough that the Capitol didn't feel the need to alter. When I walked into her kitchen and she was just there, her fingers entwined with his. It hit me like a brick, a deadly blow to the head, but of course love never really dies. I just have to wonder who, out of the two of us, she loves the most. I'm under no doubt that she has feelings for the both of us... but she has to choose one, right?

He shifts uncomfortably and runs his fingers through his hair and along his chin, stroking his stubble. "I don't believe it. The way she kissed you in the Quarter Quell..? well, she never kissed me like that."

"It was just part of the show." I sigh, for the first time in months beginning to hope that it wasn't. That it wasn't just for the games. Really hoping now, really wishing with all of my heart that she really does love me.

"No, you won her over. Gave up everything for her. Maybe that's the only way to convince her that you love her." He pauses and sighs again, exhaling deeply through his nose. "I should have volunteered to take your place in the first Games. Protected her then."

Katniss shifts in the darkness, rolling over on her little nest. I wait for a moment as I listen to her soft breathing. Just realising how much we've been through together. The scars we share, on the inside. "You couldn't. She'd never have forgiven you. You had to take care of her family. They matter more to her than her life."

"Well it won't be an issue much longer." He shifts a little and lets out a groan as he pushes himself to his feet. "I think it's unlikely all three of us will be alive at the end of the war. And if we are, I guess it's Katniss' problem. Who to choose." He yawns as he steps away, heading back to his own little nest of pelts. "We should get some sleep." Before he turns completely though, he bends to the floor and picks up a fur coat, drifting it over my legs again. I smile my thanks up to him in the darkness, feeling my tiredness in the effort it takes to construct the grimace.

"Yeah." I turn around a little and slide my handcuffs down the railing. "I wonder how she'll make up her mind."

"Oh, that I do know." The furs make a 'flumph' noise as he drops himself onto them and buries his face in their soft warmth. "Katniss will pick whoever she thinks she can't survive without."


	30. Chapter 30

When we all get up, Katniss is kind of cold towards us, like she heard our conversation last night. Surely she knows it's true? As we wander about the basement, I start to think I could have refuted Gale's statement. Maybe suggested she'll choose whichever one of us she loves more… or whichever one she can't bear to break the heart of… but that would have implied that she could quite easily break the heart of the other.

In the end I shake off his statement. He can't have thought about it so much that his precise choice of words have any kind of meaning, can he? She'll pick whoever she can't live without, correct, but there are so many more factors than her pure survival. I know her. In the first games, she could have soldiered on alone. Even at the very end, she could have shot me and rolled in the glory herself. But no, she would have rather died than face her fate alone. Because she couldn't bear to live without me.

By the time we're ready to move though, she's warmed up towards us and all things considered, we're generally in quite good spirits. Tigris comes down and calls us up into the back room of the shop for some breakfast- which turns out to be a strange concoction of liver pate and fig cookies- and to watch the most recent Capitol broadcast. Though strange, she's alright, really. As I pick up cubes of pate with my fingers and slot them between my lips, I begin to wonder why I ever suspected her. She's genuinely a nice person. Most people are, really. Nobody, even Snow, is _pure _evil. Real or not real?

Real, I decide.

The television broadcast is broken into by Beetee, and reports of rebel developments come streaming through. Abandoned cars being driven remotely down streets to set off the pods before actual people head down there. They don't set off every single one of them- but if one had headed down that street before we had and set off all the pods, we wouldn't be where we are right now. We could have been back at base or at the very least have had considerably more members of our team. Their downcast faces remind me of that much. We'd still have Finnick, and both Leegs and Jackson and Messalla and maybe even Boggs. And if we still had Boggs then we'd still have Mitchell, and we wouldn't have been hidden beneath masses of fur coats in the basement of a musty clothes shop for the past two days, I can tell you that for sure.

With more members of our team, perhaps Snow would already be dead.

In the early hours of this morning- in fact when Gale and I had our heart-to-heart- the rebels began to infiltrate and invade parts of the city, securing three lines of defence to the centre of the Capitol. Heading, slowly and with minimal loss of life, straight for Snow. I know by Katniss' face that she needs to be the one to kill him. That we have to get to his mansion before Coin does.

"This can't last." Gale says, simply. He stretches out his legs on the floor in front of him and stretches his neck from side to side, testing the stitches. "In fact, I'm surprised they've kept it going this long. The Capitol will adjust by deactivating certain pods then reactivating them when the rebels head down the streets. And Beetee has just given away our main tactic by revealing it on national television." His prediction is perfectly timed, with the screen showing in graphic detail the deaths of twenty rebel soldiers as they head down an apparently 'disarmed' street. Yeah.

All I can think of is Plutarch, the head Gamemaker for our last games. Oh, how he'd love to be in control for this one. How he'd love to have his hands on the steering wheel, directing this mission or pressing the buttons to kill enemy soldiers. The typical personality traits of a Gamemaker really, but seeing as he's the leader for the rebel side now, I guess his motives are different. Still, I can't help but to share these thoughts with the group.

The television broadcast is handed back over to the Capitol, who grimly announce the areas of the city that are to evacuate and where they are to head. From the back room, we hear shuffling outside in the street. Together, we all move over to the windows and peer out through the shutters, our breath held. Already, panicked Capitol citizens are streaming down the streets on either side of the shop and converging on the one street in front of it. Some are in pyjamas, wrapped in robes and quilts with fluffy slippers hastily shoved onto their feet. Some of the more prepared citizens wear everyday clothes and clutch bulging suitcase, which they wheel along the cobbled street behind them.

Was this what it looked like in 12, with the citizens fleeing the burning town? Of course not. Even the chaos outside the windows is too orderly to compare to what would have took place there… but there's still something about the terrified faces of the children walking past that stabs through my heart. These kids have never had anything, ever to be scared of. Of course, the most deadly powerful man in all of Panem lives on their doorstep and this city is where 24 kids every year come to be trained to be killers, but these kids themselves have never really been faced with the fear of death. In fact, a very overweight child that wobbles by the window just reinforces this fact. The only thing these kids have to fear is themselves.

A plan hatches itself in my head, pure genius really, as we watch the panic grip the people outside. It's overshadowed by Tigris, who locks us in the basement and heads out into the Capitol to retrieve information. While we sit in silence in the dark, wary of anybody outside possibly hearing us and our location being discovered, I work on my plan.

We should sneak out now. Wrap up in furs, compose some inconspicuous costumes and head out into the streets. Follow the citizens of the Capitol to the square in front of the president's mansion, then cause a distraction, break away in the chaos and kill Snow.

Katniss paces back and forth as I formulate this plan, her soft tread muffled further by the fur-lined walls. Gale begs her to sit, to relax, but I understand why she can't. How many times have we sat by and watched innocent people be slaughtered?

As she thinks, her paces quicken. Her steps become thuds, her eyes widen and narrow and send burning glares at us if we so much as breathe too loudly.

I turn instead to thinking about what the end of this war will mean for me. I killed Mitchell, whether intentionally or not and even in this world where we kill kids for fun, this is a crime. The others possibly face charges for allowing me to live, but ultimately it's me that's going to be forced to sit there in front of Coin, watch back that footage and be unable to dispute any claims made against me. It is.

Katniss glances over at me every few minutes, and I can tell she's getting more and more uneasy about Tigris' absence. She's not the only one. Has she gone to turn us in to the Capitol? Are Snow's men on their way here, right now, to slaughter all that remains of Star Squad 451?

By the time late afternoon rolls around, I express this concern to Katniss. "Do you think they've got her?" I whisper across the room, to where she is lying on a bed of pelts and looking up at the ceiling. "Do you think we should make a run for it? Just… go?"

We agree to give it until nightfall, but just as we prepare to grab our stuff and go, the door of the shop slams shut and Tigris enters, pushing her way through the cupboard and padding down the stairs to join us. With her she brings a tray full of steaming plates, mounded with ham and potatoes and a creamy sauce. She places a plate in the hands of each of us, and we sit in a circle on the basement floor, each with a coat draped lightly around our shoulders.

Apparently, Tigris managed to sell a whole collection of fur underwear to those citizens who left without much more than their pyjamas, bringing in a fortune with which she decided to buy some decent food. Peacekeepers are breaking into homes and apartments, assigning homeless houseguests to share with the elite members of society. Here in the outer circle of the inner city, we're safe. The crowds of people outside the windows has diminished to a trickle, just a line on either side with frequent breaks, but just as you think the line has ended another straggler presses on through the snow and the wind.

On the TV- which Tigris brings down to the basement- we learn that even the President has taken in some of the cities refugees. While I find this unlikely, it could be a chance for us to get into his mansion. And as the head peacekeeper goes on and on, we realise that soon even this shop and this basement itself could be overloaded with desperate, cold and homeless citizens. And, as such, it's vital that we leave. "Tigris… you could have to accommodate more people. We can't stay here." I place my empty plate down on the floor and look around at my team, my friends. How many days can we stay here? How many of us will come out of this alive at the end of it all?


	31. Chapter 31

Katniss and Gale disappear upstairs into Tigris' tiny kitchen, and when they come back they've formulated this plan about going out into the Capitol. The two of them with Pollux and Cressida, leaving me here because I'm 'dangerous' and 'unpredictable'. Well, they're right. I will, as they say, 'endanger the mission'. It's all fair enough really. But I can't sit here, just watching as the Capitol crumbles around me, and they succeed and get all the credit for killing Snow when he's done me just as much damage, perhaps even more.

I have to do something.

"I'm leaving."

Katniss cocks her head to one side and puts her hand on her hips. Oh come on, out of everything, out of all this I get to deal with Miss Sassy-Pants? "To do what?" Cressida calls from the corner of the room, where she's organising a few supplies and stuffing them into her already bulging pockets, testing how much will fit. I think back to the plan I formulated earlier, the one about getting through the city in the crowd of evacuees- which will have picked up again by morning with the ever increasing amount of people being removed from their homes.

"Create a diversion." I shrug. Someone has to do it and I don't see any of the others volunteering. I share my plan and Katniss agrees it's a good one- and that I can be the diversion. They're expecting a group of five anyway, so divided we're stronger.

Katniss looks apprehensive. She still has her hand on her hip but with less attitude. She's looking at me with a sullen expression, like she's actually worried about me. "What if you lose control?" I expected her to snap, so it's shocking when I hear a soft murmur of concern escape her lips.

"You mean… go mutt? Well I'll try and get back here, and if I can't then I'll take down as many of Snow's people as possible."

"And if they get you?" Gale asks, real concern in his voice now. Not for me though, for Katniss. Because if I die, there's a chance a huge part of her will too. "You don't even have a gun."

"Well I'm just going to have to take my chances. Like the rest of you. I'm not sitting here doing nothing while you guys have all the fun. He's hurt me as much as he's hurt the rest of you, you know. I want my revenge too." Gale looks me in the eyes, sees what I say to be true, and digs in the tiny pocket on his breast. He places his tiny purple pill, his nightlock, into the palm of my hand. I just stare at it, my eyes bulging. I can't accept this… but I can't leave it here, either. "What about you?"

He pats the sheath of arrows over his shoulder and nods at Katniss. "She won't give them the satisfaction of taking me alive." Her eyes glass over, looking blankly into my face.

"Take it, Peeta." Her voice croaks, like she knows this could be one of the last things she says to me, if the Capitol gets me. Like she doesn't trust me not to just take it out of boredom. She reaches out and folds my fingers around the tiny pill, confirmation that the ownership has changed. "Nobody will be there to help you." Again, back to the first games. Where I needed her to keep me alive. This time, she won't be around to kill me.

This last night, we are each awoken by the nightmares of others. We all sleep fitfully, tossing and turning on the floor. I've finally given in and stopped demanding to be handcuffed to the railings by the stairs, even if it is just for this last night. It's like before both games, where I just couldn't sleep. Katniss awakes with a start on the other side of the room and Gale shifts over to her, putting one hand under her head and wrapping the other over her chest, holding her close to him.

For some reason this grinds me the wrong way. I don't love her… no, the Capitol made me hate her… but at the same time I do love her. I couldn't live with myself if she died because I failed on my part of the mission… but she loves Gale, and if she wants to be with him then I must let her do that, because it is her choice, right?

Tigris comes in to wake us up at five. We eat our remaining tins of food, leaving our last tin of salmon for her in thanks. Her face contorts in some way, overly happy for this one gift, the real minimum of what we should give to her after all she has done for us. She purrs in delight and dedicates herself to applying our disguises. By the time we stand assembled in the back room of her shop, we are far from recognisable as ourselves.

We agree to slip out in three groups- first Cressida and Pollux, and then Katniss and Gale and then me. We'll all head to the city circle, all gather with the crowd of refugees in the space in front of the mansion where the chariots stopped for Snow's speech before the games. And then, I'll create a distraction, the peacekeepers will focus their attention on me while Katniss and Gale slip into the President's mansion and assassinate him, I guess. And if I can't run away before the peacekeepers get me, I'll take my nightlock.

We stand in the front of the shop as Tigris looks through the shutters on the doors, opening them to allow Cressida and Pollux to leave while nobody is looking and then waiting for an opportunity for Katniss and Gale. Before they leave, Katniss comes over to me and unlocks the handcuffs, letting them drop from my wrists.

"You'll need your hands." She mumbles, as she kicks them across the floor and wraps her arms tightly around my neck. "Good luck, Peeta." Her whispers tickle my ear as I look to Gale for support. He nods and I wrap my arms around her body, gentle, barely touching her. As she pulls away, she plants a delicate kiss on my forehead, stroking my cheek with her thumb.

"Good luck, Girl on Fire." I whisper in return, clutching her other arm in mine and running my finger over the raised scar where Johanna cut out the tracker.

"Listen to me Peeta, don't do anything stupid." She's taken a step back now, like she's done with me, like she's let me go.

"Last resort, everything. Promise." She goes to take another step back towards Gale but seems unable to stop herself from throwing her body into my arms one last time. She sobs slightly into my neck, tightening her grip like she's never, ever going to let me go. Gale coughs and she releases her hold, looking up into my eyes with tears in her own.

Her voice cracks as she speaks, shifting her gaze down to my chest. "All right then." She turns to leave, kissing Tigris on the cheek as she pulls her scarf over her face and steps out into the blizzard, shortly followed by Gale. Before he completely turns his back on me though, he finds a moment to pause and bless me with a three-fingered salute. I return the action, pulling my hat down over my ears and making sure my coat is buttoned.

The cold air hits me as I step into the street, my fingers wrapped tightly around a knife from Tigris' kitchen that's tucked into my coat pocket. I put my head down and shuffle along with the group, keeping Katniss' red scarf up ahead in my sights.

After a few minutes of painful trudging she turns around to look at me, but can't find me in the crowds. Her eyes, panicked, move back and to. She looks down at someone behind her and snaps her head back around, leaning into Gale to talk to him about something.

People press into me from all sides and I gasp for breath. I can't breathe. There's too many people. It's too cold. I need to stop. I can't keep going. I need to…

Gunfire sounds up ahead and the people around me scream and try to stop, but the pressure from behind keeps us moving. Several metres ahead, a large gap appears in the body of people as they're mown down by bullets shot from the rooftops. Katniss' scarf vanishes as she dives into a doorway, gripping Gale's arm. I can do nothing but keep moving forwards, trapped in the middle of the stream.

From where I am I can see the rebels on the rooftops, and now so many people are dead or kneeling on the floor in fear that I can see the slaughter in the road. The street ahead lies empty, the line held by thundering gunfire. They're aiming for the peacekeepers that are dotted among us at regular intervals, but they're not exactly skilled shooters. They're just firing, killing everyone.

Before I reach the mass murder site, I spot a narrow alley way leading off the main street and start pushing my way through desperate refugees to reach it. I plough down through the display in front of a shop and push at the gate, and mercifully it swings open. My eyes widen in panic as I force it shut behind me, bolting it to stop any refugees from following me and giving away my position.

In the alleyway itself lies one unconscious and one dead peacekeeper, slumped amongst the rubbish in the gaps between the towering brick walls. I flex my arms the best I can in my bulky coat and step out of the other end of the alley, into chaos yet again. An activated pod some distance up the street sends towering waves of steaming water down the road and I have to duck into the alleyway to avoid being boiled alive.

I leap into the road as the steam cools and hope with all of my heart that that's the only pod on this street. Katniss' scarf bobs up ahead with Gale next to her and there's a sneaking suspicion in my heart that they're the ones who attacked the peacekeepers in the alleyway. The guns that they swing in front and behind them tell me I'm right. Also that I'm never going to get my hands on a decent weapon at this rate.

They shoot, ploughing forward through the survivors, heading quickly towards the centre and stopping at nothing along the way. I on the other hand stumble blindly through leftover steam, tripping over boiled and bloody bodies and gagging on the stench of cooked flesh.

A man screams out as I stand on his leg and the flesh peels away from the bone. I shudder and press onwards, needing to keep Katniss in my sights. I need to get to the mansion. I need to see Snow dead.

I lose Katniss and Gale, encounter more bodies and pools of blood, more rebel soldiers and panicked peacekeepers. Somehow, I keep my head low. Somehow, I made it to the city centre and join the crowd of refugees crammed into the circle. I crane my head, pushing my way through the people to get to the concrete barrier in front. As I do so, I notice that all the people I push out of the way are adults. When I get to the front, I realise why- all of the people inside the circle are children.

"Crap." I whisper, holding onto the barrier in front of me while I strain to catch a breath. Don't lose it now, Peeta. You can't turn back now. I look down, inhaling deeply, and my eyes land on the blonde hair of a young girl to my right. "Prim?"


	32. Chapter 32

She looks up, startled, her eyes wide in panic. As she sees me, her lips curve into a slight grimace, a friendly greeting. "What are you doing here?"

"Helping." She smiles again, patting the medipack strapped to her waist.

"How? Why are you here? How did you even get here?" Thinking only of Katniss now, I pull Prim into me and shield her from the crowds behind, protecting her with my body, warming her with the fur of my coat.

"I snuck in with the rebels. Boarded the train with them and wound my way through the city with all the refugees. And now I'm here, and I'm going to watch Katniss kill Snow." These words are mumbled to the barrier, but her speech is obviously awe-filled. I close my eyes, tilting my head back in grief. She could have been killed!

"Does your mother know?"

"Are you stupid?"

"Well, yes, but that's not the point, Prim!" I work hard to keep my voice quiet while I keep my arms wrapped protectively around her shoulders, keeping my eye out for Katniss. The icy air stings as I inhale through gritted teeth, bouncing on the balls of my feet to keep warm.

A whirring sound comes from overhead as a hovercraft emblazoned with the seal of the Capitol flies overhead. As I watch it, I spot Katniss climbing up a flagpole in the middle of the crowd, on the left of the barrier. Before I can point her out to Prim, hundreds of parachutes rain from the hovercraft and land inside the barrier. The children pick them up, their faces grinning with the prospect of what the containers hold, but the feeling deep in the pit of my stomach says otherwise. I realise what is happening before it does- but it's too late for me to warn anyone. Just as I open my mouth to shout 'NO!', about twenty parachutes explode, instantly killing all who held them and those around them.

I fall backwards, hitting my head on the icy ground as Prim leaps from my grasp and over the barrier, joining the floor of people running in to help the wounded. My heart aches, my stomach churns. I know what's coming; I know I know I know. I close my eyes and push myself up, fighting the overwhelming dizziness that has suddenly clouded my brain. No… Prim… Come back…

Out of the corner of my eye, Katniss falls limp from the flagpole. I'm stuck between the two, torn between saving Prim and running to Katniss' aid. The peacekeepers have torn down the barrier in front of me and I take one step forward… and the rest of the parachutes explode, and right from where I stand, I watch as Prim's skin erupts in flames, watch as her unseeing eyes roll back in her head and her body falls limp to the ground. It all happens so quickly, a split second and it's all over. And Prim is dead.

Balls of fire that erupted from the last lot of parachutes bounce over heads and into the crowd behind me. Through the smoke and the confusion I see hundreds of balls of flame head in Katniss' direction, and I'm so overwhelmed with grief from the possibility of both her and Prim dying in this short slot of time that it takes the searing heat of a ball of fire catching the side of my head for me to come back to my senses. Shaking, I slam my hands into my head, strip off my coat and throw it over the woman behind me, silencing her screams and attempting to suffocate the flames.

I leap to my feet again, jumpy, and look towards Katniss. She is on her feet, engulfed in a ball of flame. Screaming, shouting, falling, stopping. I grab my coat again and leap forward, over dead bodies of children, playing hopscotch with blood-stained circles and torches bodies. A ball of fire comes from behind as I reach Katniss, and the tail licks up my arm. I throw the heavy fur coat over Katniss, beating out the scorching flames with my fists. They lick around the edges of the fabric and up my arms, burning and blistering my skin, sending searing pain throughout my whole body.

I ignore the flames that travel up my shirt, burning it off my bare back. Instead, I cradle the head of my mockingjay in my lap, holding her smouldering braid in one of my burning hands while calling for help in a voice that isn't heard. Katniss. Please be okay.

Tears run down my face, cutting salty tracks in accumulated soot and dirt. The blackened drops drip onto her blistering face, the skin already cracked and coming apart.

_Katniss._

Please, Katniss.

I need you to be okay.

Please, Katniss.

I love you.


	33. Chapter 32 and a half

The flames lick my skin, red and orange and white. But, instead of tickling like Portia's flames on my cape and in my hair, these flames burn. In fact they scorch, melting my skin and forcing screams from my mouth. As I part my lips, the fire creeps into my mouth and licks at my teeth, coats my tongue. I cough them out, curling myself over Katniss's head, cradling her in my arms as I bite my teeth and force my streaming eyes open through the smoke and the pain.

There's too much smoke. It's all in my nose, my mouth, and my lungs. My hair is blackened and singed, falling in clumps around my shoulders. As my lungs fight to find oxygen in the gasping mouthfuls of smoke I manage to inhale, my head starts to spin.

The Capitol spins around me, watery and waving through the heat. My nose is full of the smell of burning flesh, Katniss' and my own and the children's and Prim's and the peacekeepers and the adults and the rebels. I supress the urge to vomit, resting Katniss' head down on the hot concrete and falling to one side. My shoulder hits the ground hard, black dots beginning to appear at the edges of my sight.

Taking deep breaths of the cleaner air near the ground, I roll over and over next to Katniss, extinguishing the flames. When I can no longer feel their burning substance tickling over my skin, I stop rolling and grip hold of Katniss' red-hot hand with my own, scared that if I let her go I'll lose her again.

Despite the Chaos so obviously ensuing around us, it seems like we are the only two left in the world. There's no Gale, no Snow, no Haymitch. Nobody, nothing to keep us apart, and I will not let her get away again.

I won't.

The black spots get bigger, seeming to pop and send a wave of thick black tar across my eyes.

For one second I think of the black wave that chased us down that street.

For one minute I remember Mitchell and Finnick and Jackson and everyone who gave their lives for us to live.

It feels like hours until someone approaches me, shouts out, tears my hand away from Katniss' and lifts me over their shoulder. Though each brush of my skin against something else hurts so much, it feels as though it comes from miles away. So… so far…

For longer than I can count- for all eternity, perhaps- I think about Katniss.


	34. Chapter 33

_"Peeta? Listen here you, you're not giving up on me, hear me? I'm serious, kid."_

_"Peeta! Is he okay? What's wrong?"_

_"Come on, Peeta."_

_"Where's his hair?"_

_"Most of it burnt off, it was just easier to shave the rest."_

_"When will he wake up?"_

_"I'm not a doctor, I don't know. I don't think the actual doctors do either, to be honest."_

_"He should be awake though, shouldn't he?"_

_"He's been through a lot. He'll pull through. He's a fighter."_

_"Yeah."_

Katniss?

Haymitch? Gale?

Johanna?

Finnick? Annie?

Delly?

Dad?

Mom?

Who's in my room? Why are you here? Just let me sleep!

My skin tingles with pain. My bones ache with tiredness. There's a pinch in my arm where something is… and it just won't go.

Where am I?

What happened?

I'm dead, aren't I?

No, I can't be dead.

Can I?

_"Look! He moved!"_

_"Are you sure?"_

_"Yes! Look! His eye- did you see that?"_

_"It was probably just a twitch. Come on, we need to let him rest."_

I try to breathe, in and out, but nothing happens. I try to open my eyes, but they won't budge.

I'm dead.

I'm not dead.

But why can't I move?

There's huge gaps in my mind as I drift in and out of sleep.

What time is it?

What day?

How long have I been here?

Where even _is_ here?

Eventually- probably minutes, possibly days, maybe even weeks later- I manage to do it.

After trying so hard for what seems like forever, I can finally accomplish the most futile of tasks

It takes everything. All of my energy, my effort, my concentration, but I do it.

I open my eyes.

I'm in a hospital. I can tell by how white everything is. The ceiling, the walls, the floor. It's all the same. Bright and white and inescapable. There isn't a door.

I'm covered by a white sheet, lying lightly across my skin. But it's hot, so hot. So warm.

Sweat beads on my forehead. I try to lift my arm to wipe it away, but I can't.

My skin pulls when I flex my muscles. It's tight and hot, so, so hot. It feels like I'm still on fire.

That's not the only reason I can't move, though.

There's straps, coming up from beneath me and restraining me, holding me to the bed.

Holding my waist, my arms, my legs, my head. Keeping me absolutely still. I glance down at my arm, where the pinching is. There's a clear tube running from under a sterile dressing on the inside crook of my elbow, disappearing off into the wall behind my head.

Oh god.

I'm in the Capitol.

Snow got me.

Where's my pill?

Oh god.

I'm going to die.

They're going to kill me.

Tracker jackers.

They're going to do it again.

Turn me against Katniss again just when I'd started to love her.

Katniss.

Katniss.

Where are you?

Katniss!

Come save me! Please!

Something constricts inside me. My stomach again, wanting to vomit the non-existent contents of my empty stomach.

Oh god. Oh god.

Help me!

I open my mouth to try and scream out, to shout for help, for Katniss, Haymitch, Gale, anyone to come save me.

Please, help me.

Please.

I try to blink away the tears and hide the sobs, but as soon as I close my eyes I feel myself being pulled under again.

Drowning in the stifling heat of the room, being pushed down by the light sheet, suddenly too heavy on my skin.

Help me, please.

I need to get out of here.

I need to go home.

Please.

Katniss.

Please.

Anybody.

_Help me._


	35. Chapter 34

I stand on two shaking legs, naked in front of a full-length mirror. The dressing room is plush- dark wood walls and a deep carpet. Walls stacked high with clothes and shoes, a dressing table pushed against one wall littered with scents and hairspray and makeups.

Looking in the mirror, my hands, arms and torso are wrapped tightly in bandages, holding me together. Some of the white cloth strips cover deep cuts, like the welts on my wrists from the handcuffs. The rest cover the angry red burns across my skin that get aggravated when things brush against them.

My head is practically bald, almost all of my hair having been burnt off by the fire and the rest, unsalvageable, shaved. I run my hands over my skull, my bare fingers tracing the bumps usually hidden by hair. The stubble tickles the tips of my fingers, makes my hands sting beneath the bandages.

I fight the constriction of the bandages again, straightening out my arms and letting them drop to my sides. My eyes are surrounded by the dark circles of tiredness, my lips encircled by thick stubble. They won't let me near razors. They used to shave for me while I was in the hospital, but I don't know what I'm going to do now.

My whole body shaking with fatigue, I pull some underwear from the stack on the shelves and step into them, pulling them up to my waist. A pair of navy blue tracksuit bottoms next, and a white t-shirt that's thin enough to let me see the outlines of the bandages beneath. Finally, I pull on a pair of fresh white sports socks, before sitting down at the dressing table and turning to stare at my face in the other mirror.

I don't remember much from the last few weeks, really. Haymitch visited a few times- it was him I heard while I was asleep, talking to Johanna and Annie and Gale, all of whom cared enough to come visit me while I was out but none of them brave enough to come see me now that I'm 'mentally disorientated' and awake.

Nobody has been to see me now that I'm not strapped down, restricted by leather bands for my own safety just as much as for anybody else's. Nobody's bothered to make the trip down here now that I'm out of that grim white place, living in one of the many bedrooms in Snow's mansion.

I wonder where Katniss is. In an attempt to answer this question, I spend days upon days roaming the rooms, thrusting open the doors of the empty mansion and hunting for a room with any evidence that Katniss Everdeen may have been here. I avoid the west wing, reserved for homeless Capitol Citizens and families of some of the people who were hurt in the fire bombings, seeing as they're being treated in the specialist hospital now set up in the dungeons beneath the mansion.

On these travels I manage to find Haymitch's room- he was slumped over a table in the corner with a bottle of Snow's fine vintage in one hand and his knife in the other. I wander around the pungent rose garden, find hauntingly empty rooms thick with dust and cobwebs and shockingly modern rooms bustling with people. I avoid the latter. Where there's people, there's pain, and I can't be trusted around them.

Instead, I explore the empty rooms and chambers of the Mansion's east wing. This is where Snow lived, where I now reside. Where Coin, leader of 13 and now of Panem, now lives- in the Presidential suite, of course. And maybe, where Katniss might be hiding.

Before I manage to find her, though, and perhaps a week after my arrival in the mansion, Haymitch tracks me down. As we walk through the corridors to my room and onwards to the meeting about Snow's execution, we cross paths with Effie. She totters towards me high heels, but she no longer wears her extravagant outfits or brightly coloured wigs. Her natural hair is blonde, lying in soft waves around her shoulder. Instead of her usual bold makeup, her face is decorated with a light hand. And, instead of some silly dress, she's in black trousers and a suit jacket.

Her face crumples when she sees me, my hair now close to its usual length but my skin still covered in layers of white cloth. In an action shockingly out of character, she rests her hand on Haymitch's shoulder and gives him a sympathetic look. "It's so nice that this will all be over soon." She smiles, before shuffling across and wrapping her arms tightly around my shoulders.

I almost shout out in pain as she presses on the burns on my back, on my arms, but I bite my lips and gingerly return the embrace. With a gentle pat between my shoulder blades, she reminds us that we have only half an hour to get to Coin's office for the pre-execution meeting.

Haymitch leaves me at my room and head back to his own for a mug of coffee and to change his clothes. When I open the door, I find a young girl- about my age- standing inside my bedroom. I raise my eyebrow- singed- in question, and she leads me off into my dressing room. A whole prep team have crowded into the tiny space, the dressing table even more littered with sprays and lotions and creams and makeup.

A boy- again not much older than myself- introduces himself as Horne. "We're your new prep team- this is Leona," he indicates the girl that greeted me, "and this is Magnus." He points to the other boy and puts his hand out for me to shake. "We're students at the college, prep-team in training, so to speak.

As Magnus guides me into the bathroom, I notice how unmarked, how normal they look. Sure, they have their fair share of piercings and the unusual haircuts I've seen on pretty much every other Capitol teenager I've encountered- but they seem… normal. In the bathroom, Magnus removes my shirt, sweatpants and socks- my usual daily wear- and rubs down my skin with a cool, damp cloth. He washes my hair, then extracts a razor from his pocket and tries to shave my facial hair. I dodge him, holding my hands out in surrender.

"Please, let me. I want to do it myself." He looks at me with his head leaning to one side, as though he is considering it, then thinks better of it and shakes his head.

"They'll get mad if you cut yourself. There'll be cameras- you need to be looking on top form, not like you've just come out of a fight with Edward Scissorhands."

"Who?"

"Never mind, it's an old world thing. My dad owns this shop that sells loads of vintage films on things they call DVDs- you put them in your TV and you watch whatever is on them. Scissorhands was this character in one of these films- he had scissors for hands and had to overcome this… er… problem."

"Oh."

"So can I get rid of your beard? You look kind of homeless."

"Oh, yeah." I let him rub foam onto my face and scrape away at my skin, sitting as still as I possibly can do. When he's done, he smiles at me and pockets the razor again, inviting me back to the dressing room with a wave of his hand.

The students rub a soothing cream onto my raw skin, then slather makeup onto my cheeks and under my eyes to disguise the dark circles. They help me into a pressed suit from the wardrobe, sliding both of my feet into a pair of highly polished black shoes. When they're done, they step back to admire their work.

"Looking great." Leona smiles, leaning forward to dust an invisible speck off my collar.

"Thanks." My voice shakes with nerves. I'm finally going to see Katniss again. I look down at my shaking hands, remembering how my skin burned as I cradled her head in my hands, how they'd probably have fused together if I clutched her hand any tighter in the fire storm. A knock at the door sends my prep team hurrying to answer, as I push myself to my feet and follow in their wake.

Horne and Leona answer the door to Haymitch, and while Magnus hovers behind them like an eager puppy, I slip the razor from the back pocket of his overalls, tucking it quickly up my sleeve. My fake leg makes a clunk as I follow Haymitch down the corridor and struggle up the stairs after him, heading down the familiar corridor to the huge room where I filmed my last propo for Snow.

My heart beats harder the closer we get. It knows, I know, that we're getting closer to Katniss. As we walk, I allow Haymitch to walk one step ahead and slip the razor into the inside pocket of my jacket.


	36. Chapter 35

Haymitch ushers me into the office, where Enobaria, Johanna, Beetee and Annie are already seated. All the remaining Victors, bar Katniss. I sit down next to Haymitch on one side of Snow's huge square desk, where we all sit in silence and wait for Katniss and Coin to arrive.

Why are we here? Why have they gathered us like this? All I can think is that they want us, as rebels against the Capitol, to be a part of Snow's execution. To show our faces. But then- what is Enobaria doing here? She's widely recognised across Panem as against the rebel cause… right? Her presence would hardly put things in our favour. She doesn't look pleased to be here anyway, whatever it's for.

Nobody in the room looks particularly healthy, either. Annie is pale and shaking, with red eyes and a swollen nose. Of course- Finnick. I try to smile at her, show her some sign of reassurance, but she's on the other side of the table and won't look up.

Johanna is wide-eyed and looks alert, jumping at every little noise. She sends me nervous glances across the desk but I shift my gaze before I can respond.

Next to Johanna sits Enobaria, looking bored and furious. She picks at the desk, scraping at the polish with a finely shaped nail. Her face is pale with dark circles under her eyes and a few cuts and scrapes along her cheeks. I wonder what happened to her…

Beetee on the other side of me, though still looking rather pale, looks the best out of us all. Maybe the most sleep deprived, but undoubtedly the healthiest.

Haymitch looks terrible. He's been running around looking after both me and Katniss as we wandered lost around the mansion, both with our 'mentally disorientated' bands rattling around our wrists. In one single moment he almost lost the two victors that have ever one for him, the only two friends he's ever really had- and it shows. There are cuts along his chin where he tried to shave, and a coffee stain on his white shirt. His hair, though combed though at the front, is slightly knotted at the back. And as if these things in themselves didn't give the impression of someone who has completely let himself go, his hands have begun to shake again. Not gently, like before, but rapidly. Like someone who, after trying so hard, has sunk back into his chronic alcoholism and has had to very suddenly sober up again to face reality.

And as I look around at us all, I notice that we are all wearing the same thing- the grey rebel uniform of District 13.

I stare at the dark wood of the desk, running my fingers along the edges and feeling the smooth polished surface of the ancient, rich wood. I can't look at the other victors anymore, my friends. I can't.

My head snaps up as Katniss pushes the door open and steps into the room, looking into all of our pale and waiting faces. The bracelet that was on my wrist until this morning is also gone from hers. My eyes bulge at the sight of her skin, red and crinkled on her hands and wrists and neck. Her hair is short, just brushing her shoulders now, with the longer parts pinned back to hide some of the thinner patches. I know they're there, because they fell out in my hands.

"What's this?" She looks around at us all again, and her eyes widen when they land on my face. Apparently I look worse than I thought. That or she wasn't really expecting me to be sitting here.

"We're not sure." Haymitch answers, looking around our company again and shifting awkwardly next to me. "It appears to be a gathering of the remaining Victors."

"We're all that's left?" Her voice breaks a little as her shoulders sag. Seven of us- not even one from each district. And three of us are from 12.

"The price of celebrity. We were targeted from both sides. The Capitol killed the Victors they suspected of being rebels. The rebels killed those thought to be allied with the Capitol." Beetee pushes his glasses up his nose and drops his gaze to the table, like myself.

"So what's she doing here?" I look up again just in time to see Johanna jabbing her thumb in Enobaria's direction. Yes, she's the odd one out… What is she doing here? Why is she still alive?

The door opens again and the shaft of light from the corridor outside basks us all in a sickly yellow glow. "_She_ is protected under what we call the Mockingjay Deal, wherein Katniss Everdeen agreed to support the rebels in exchange for captured victors' immunity. Katniss has upheld her side of the bargain, and so shall we." Coin steps properly into the office and lets the door swing shut behind her. She crosses the tiled area in a few steps and is suddenly behind the empty chair at the desk. "Sit down please, Katniss."

As Katniss walks to the empty seat between Beetee and Annie, Johanna mutters something like a death threat in Enobaria's direction. She places something on the table- a single white rose.

"I've asked you here today to settle a debate. Shortly, we will execute Snow. In the previous weeks, hundreds of his accomplices in the oppression of Panem have been trailed and now await their deaths. However the suffering in the districts has been so extreme that the victims believe these measures to be insufficient. In the interest of maintaining a sizable population, we can't afford to completely annihilate the entire of the Capitol's population."

I catch Katniss looking at me from across the table, her eyes falling on the burn marks on my hands poking their way out of the edges of the frayed bandages. When I raise my eyes to meet hers, she's staring at my forehead. Of course- the eyebrows haven't fully grown back yet, and my hair is shorter than it used to be. She moves her gaze down and looks me in the eye, but I look quickly over at Coin, avoiding her questioning stare.

"So, an alternative has been placed on the table." With this, she rests her hands atop the dark wood and leans forward, excitement gleaming in her cold, grey eyes. "Since my colleagues and I seem to be unable to come to a consensus, it has been agreed that we will let you- the victors- decide. A majority of four will approve the plan- no one may abstain from the vote." All around, heads nod carefully, slowly. "What has been proposed is that instead of eliminating the entire population of the Capitol, we hold a final, symbolic Hunger Games using the children directly related to those who held the highest power."

The look of shock and in some cases disgust, instantly flits across our faces. Another games?

"What?" Johanna's mouth is wide open, her eyes wide in horror.

Coin straightens her fingers, pushing herself up a few centimetres. "We hold another Hunger Games using Capitol children." Now she stands up straight, tall as if she is proud of this idea. She folds her arms across her chest. She can't be serious…

"Are you joking?" My voice escapes my lips louder than I meant it to, blurting out in almost a shout… nobody deserves this, not even the Capitol.

"No. I should also tell you that if we do hold the Games, it will be known it was done with your approval, although the individual breakdown of your votes will be kept secret for your own security." Her grey face and stern expression bores into me like a drill. She isn't joking. She really, really wants this.

Haymitch rests his hand lightly on the table, leaning forward. "Was this Plutarch's idea?"

"It was mine. It seemed to balance the need for vengeance with the least loss of life. You may cast your votes." She shifts her weight from one foot to the other, her arms still folded. She is serious. She really wants to do this?

Well, my answer is obvious. I can't let her do this- I just can't. Having been through those games twice… well those Capitol kids don't stand a chance. They'll die just like that- and it's not the kids that have done anything wrong. It's their parents. Besides- the point in this war was to stop all this unnecessary violence- wasn't it? "No! I vote no, of course! We can't have another Hunger Games!"

"Why not?" Johanna speaks. Now her, I thought she'd say no. She's been through the Games like I have- she even conspired against the Capitol to bring them to an end… what's she even playing at? "It seems very fair to me. Snow even has a granddaughter. I vote yes." I shake my head at her, incredulous. How dare she?

"So do I. Let them have a taste of their own medicine." Enobaria shrugs, almost like she is bored, like she can't wait to get out of here. I can't just sit here in silence and let yet more people die! No more deaths! I don't want anyone else to die as a result of my failures!

"This is why we rebelled! Remember?" I look over at Annie. Surely she will understand.

"I vote no." She looks at me, her eyes innocent and wide. She knows what the Games do to you, how they destroy you. "So would Finnick, if he were here."

"He isn't here, Annie. Snow's mutts killed him." Johanna says, icily. Her words cut through me like a knife and I bite my lip, gripping the edge of the seat to stop myself from getting up and slapping her.

"No. It would set a bad precedent." Beetee says, running his hand over the stubble on his chin. "We have to stop viewing each other as enemies. Our country is fragile- unity is essential for our survival. No."

Was this what it was like before the Games began? Did they shove a group of people in this very room, discuss how to make the rebels pay for what they did? Did anyone say no? Were they punished? What would have happened if they decided against initiating the Games in the first place?

"Katniss? Haymitch?" Coin raises an eyebrow, glancing between the last two victors. Katniss looks down at the desk, thinking. She chews her lips, gnawing on the inside of her cheek like she always does when she is nervous.

"I vote yes… For Prim." My heart sinks inside me, plummeting through the floor and rolling out into the crowded circle in front of the mansion. I thought she was better than this… more than revenge, more than this hatred. Resentment rises in my throat like vomit, and it stings the same way too. I turn to Haymitch. The vote lies with him. My eyes burn into his cheek, into his neck, into his chest. My hand grips his arm, the burns on my skin pulling and searing with pain as I grip onto him as hard as I can, so hard I swear his eyes are almost watering with the exertion of trying not to react- but he looks only at Katniss.

He stares right at her, examining the watery greyness of her eyes as she tries to communicate silently with him. I don't know what she's trying to tell him though. Say yes, to avenge Prim? Or say no, and redeem himself as a human being? "I'm with the Mockingjay." He says, his voice strained. His gaze drops from hers, and he looks back up at Coin with a forced smile on his lips.


	37. Chapter 36

My stomach does a dozen flips inside me and I almost throw up. It takes everything I have not to throw back my chair and punch everyone, everything. Everything I have not to just storm out of the room in disgust. Whatever I do won't change the decision. Throwing a tantrum would just give them more reason not to listen to me…

Katniss' prep team enter the room with Plutarch as she hands Coin her rose, but my head is spinning too much for me to listen. Open mouthed, I exchange a glance with both Annie and Beetee, then rise with Haymitch and walk through the mansion to the entrance hall. Katniss follows after a few minutes, her bow grasped tightly in her hands, one arrow rattling in her empty quiver. She bites her lip again as she looks over at me, guilt etched on her face as she allows her eyes to drop to the marble flooring.

With the other victors, I walk out onto the terrace and take my place on one of the seats in the front row, next to Haymitch again. Cheers from the crowd behind us indicate that Coin has stepped onto the balcony, and I look up to see her victorious silhouette, with her arms joined in front of her like a victor receiving the crown.

Through the main doors of the mansion, Katniss steps into the sunlight. Out here, I see truly the extent of the fire bombs. Her hands are scarred and stiff, all her movements controlled and painful-looking, much like my own. Her hair is slightly greyed, frazzled at the edges like it's been fried. Well, I guess it has. Her neck is the same raw red as my fingers, her arms and legs a lot skinnier than they used to be. And her skin is slightly yellow, like that of the morphlings from 6. It's then with a slight gasp that I understand. Keeping yourself drugged under to avoid facing the truth. I did the same thing for weeks- that huge empty gap in my memory where nothing, as far as I can remember, actually happened.

They march Snow out onto the terrace. The audience, behind us in the circle, goes absolutely insane. All of them, each of the thousands of rebels and Capitol citizens alike, boo. They tie Snow to a post with his hands behind his back. The white rose pokes itself out from his collar, a target lying over his heart. He coughs blood as he looks Katniss in the eye, not expecting pity or remorse.

With expert precision, Katniss withdraws the arrow from the quiver and hooks it into the bow. The audience goes silent, a sudden hush falling over the whole of Panem. She draws back the string on her bow, holding the arrow between her stiff fingers. Squinting, she lines the arrow up with the rose. I imagine it plunging into his chest, stopping his heart. I imagine him falling to one side, held up only by his cuffed hands. I imagine as Snow dies, and Panem continues on the same downward spiral of violence.

At the last moment, Katniss shifts her aim. In the split second between her moving and releasing the arrow, I can tell what her new target is. And I know she's going to hit it.

In one swift moment, the arrow vanishes and Coin plummets from the balcony. If the arrow through the chest didn't kill her, then the fall from that height onto the marble terrace almost certainly did. Confusion ripples through the crowd as Snow laughs and laughs, then coughs and then falls limp against his post, blood dripping out of the side of his mouth. The guards start to surround Katniss, and her mouth falls open in shock like she didn't expect this to happen, like she didn't want any of this. I can't move though. I'm frozen to my chair as the crowd watches in utter silence.

There's nothing more powerful than the judging silence of thousands of people, as the girl you love is surrounded.

Through the gaps in the guards' shoulders I watch as her mouth mutters an inaudible whisper. I don't think- just stand and run. My leg clunks on the marble steps but I ignore it, pushing through the guards. Her eyes wide with panic, she raises her arm and bends her head, starting to bite at the tiny pocket on the shoulder of her uniform, but I get my hand there just in time and she bites down on my fingers instead of the nightlock. I look into her eyes, wanting an answer but seeing only blank and utter confusion. Holding my stare, she screams into my face. "Let me go!"

"I can't, Katniss." Her eyes soften as the guards grab her arms and all the hope leaves her body. As they drag her backwards towards the doors, I rip the tiny pocket from her shoulder and crush the tiny purple pill beneath my foot.

She screams, shouting obscenities at me. She thrashes, fighting against the guards as they continue to push her backwards. Suddenly she is rabid, like a wild animal, shouting and screaming and thrashing about as the guards lift her above the converging crowd and carry her forward. She screams for Gale and I know what she's asking for. But he isn't here. He's not going to do it for her and neither am I. She's strong. She can win and just like in the Games, I will be by her side.


	38. Chapter 37

The door slams shut and I press my body against it, breathing heavily. What just happened? Snow is dead… but not by Katniss' hand. She killed Coin instead… signifying what? Her distaste for the rebel cause? Everything's so confusing…

As I struggle to sort things out in my mind- what's real, what's not, what exactly is happening and what the future holds- I stare down at the floor. Wooden planks stretch out beyond my vision, dark and dusty. I sink towards them, gradually raising my head to look around the room.

Yes, I'm certain I've not been here before. Empty shelves of rich wood line three of the walls. Cardboard boxes stacked tall in the centre of the room hold… what? There are antique rugs dotted around on the floor, some spread out and some rolled up, a broken chair lying on its side next to a slightly less dusty patch where the desk must have stood.

While at first glance the room looks long disused- and it certainly smells that way too- my eyes begin to see small disturbances in the dust. Here and there are darker patches where the floor shows through, where somebody has walked- and recently.

My nose itches from the dust as I push myself to my feet and walk across the room, using the footsteps as stepping stones. They take me to boxes- which contain books and papers dated some fifty, sixty years ago. One contains a heap of fabrics- jackets and coats and an odd shoe. Then the footsteps led me to the back of the room, by the window.

Through the glass- almost black with dust and grime- I can see the rose garden. Rows of pungent flowers stretch out in what, from the ground, seems to be an unusual pattern. However from here you can truly see what the pattern is- it's the seal of Panem. Paths form the outlines of the seal, different colour roses filling each section. While on the ground these colours seem random, up here each rose merges with the next and the colours mix, each flower acting like a pixel on a screen.

Vision blurred, I shake my head and continue to follow the footsteps, trying not to disturb too much dust. The footsteps, it seems, vanish into a book case. They don't come back out- so where did they go? Who was here, to magically vanish into thin air in this specific spot? I'm about to turn back, perplexed, when I see it. A single book still sits on the shelf, pressed in the shadows against the edge of the unit.

I reach out, the bandages pulling against my skin, and hook my fingers around the book. It's stuck. I pull it towards me, but it won't move. With one last heave, I pull again and this time, this time it swings forward on some kind of lever. The bookshelf swings inwards, the upper shelves moving while the bottom stays glued to the floor. And inside, is a small study.

My fingers scramble over the wallpaper until I find a light switch, then I let the door swing shut behind me and take in the room. The shelves that run around the room at head height are full- overflowing with books. A simple, cluttered desk is pushed against the wall opposite to the door, and I step towards this with one arm outstretched. Just as I reach the table and rest my hands on the plain wood, something swoops down from the left and hits me over the head. Someone yelps, and I see a flash of messy red hair as I fall sideways, lying in a crumpled heap on the floor.

When I open my eyes again, my head pounding and my whole body aching from the fall, I'm sitting on the chair. Annie, her eyes full of worry, sits in front of me, her hands resting on my knees.  
>"Peeta-"<p>

"Annie! What happened? Who hit me? Where are we?" She bites her lip, letting her head drop forwards. Her bright red curls, knotty and sticking up, fall over her shoulders and hang in front of her face.

"I'm sorry… Peeta… I thought…"

"That I was going to hurt you?" I stiffly lift my arm, resting it on her head and stroking her curls with my fingers. "I'd never do that to you Annie, surely you must know that?" She nods beneath my hand, still biting her lip. "How come you're in here, anyway?"

She moves away from me, standing and then changing her mind and sitting cross legged on the floor, just out of my reach. "How's your head?"

I raise my eyebrows at her. I'm not going to let her just… avoid the subject. "It's fine Annie- what did you hit me with anyway? No, it's not important… Why are you here? Come on."

Again, she bites her lips. She shifts uncomfortably on the floor and tucks a lock of hair behind her ear, then looks up at me with wide, watery eyes. "Since Finnick… I've just been so lonely. I figured that if I chose to be alone… it would be my fault I felt that way." A tear trickles down her cheek, picking up smudges of dust. Her grey rebel uniform is damp at the sleeves, dusty and crumpled at the knees.

"Annie…" I start, but I find I have nothing to say. I know how she feels. So, so alone. Like nothing will ever be right in the world again. Hell, I've wandered around this mansion for weeks on end, just looking for something, anything to remind me that I don't have to go through this alone. And at the end of the day, the person I love is just a criminal, just a deranged, murderous young girl with a whole life ahead of her. The person Annie loves is gone, dead.

With a heavy heart, I sit down on the floor and take her hand, holding it in my own in the tiny gap between our knees. It's cold and soft, and feels fragile like a flower petal. "Finnick- wherever he is- is looking out for you, okay. That's all he's done, his whole life, is look out for people. For you, for me, for Katniss. And I know, right now, that he would want you to be happy, okay? Look at me. You can do this. Now that Coin's dead… perhaps the plan for the Games won't go ahead, and Finnick can look down on you and me and be proud, because we've fought through this, okay? And we will win. The war is over but the fight has only just begun, you hear me? We need to win. I don't know who's going to lead Panem now, but I know it's not going to be either of us. So whoever takes charge, whoever takes the job- though recently it's had quite a high death toll, and I right? Whoever has the guts to step up and take over the country… we need to make sure they're running it right, okay?" I run my thumb over the back of her hand, reminding her that I'm still here. "And Annie?"

"Yeah?" She's looking down at our fingers, rubbing her face with the sleeve of her other arm wrapped around her arm. A rogue tear escapes and drips into her lap.

"As long as I'm around, you'll never be alone, okay? As long as we're here- me and Katniss and Haymitch and Beetee, and heck even Johanna- you'll never be alone, not really. Even though you think that all the light is gone from the world," I take my spare hand and cup her damp cheek, raising her gaze to meet mine. "You will always have friends to help you through the dark."

I lean forward and kiss her forehead as I stand, releasing her hand and pushing myself upright. She watches after me as I pull the door open and step over the bottom shelf of the book case, letting it swing closed behind me. With every step I take across the room- not bothering to follow the dusty footprints- I feel heavier, like something has hatched in my heart and is growing with every second that passes. When I finally push open the door to my room and step inside, I realise what it is.

Crumbling, I lean against the door and slide down onto the carpet, the razor clutched in my fingers. As I rip my jacket from around my shoulders and unpeel the bandages from around my arms, I start to shake. Everything from the past few months- the torture, the destruction of 12, the death of my family, the loss of Boggs and Mitchell and Jackson and _everyone_ and the fire bombings in the circle and Prim… it all piles on top of me and I drown in my grief.

I run the blade of the razor over the healing skin on my arms, feeling the release as blood pours from the thin red slices. The feeling is similar to in the second arena, when we used the saltwater to purge the poison from our skin. That release, like everything bad in the world is just disappearing out of you…

When I look down, my arms are patterned with a lattice of cuts, the razor shining with red. I gag, disgusted with myself. I let it happen again… like with the handcuffs- using pain to control my emotions. I can't keep doing this!

Shaking and stumbling, I run to the bathroom, cradling my sore arm. I drop the razor into the sink, running the taps to wash away the blood, the pain. My skin stings as the icy water runs over my cuts, my breaths heave as I watch the red river flow down the white porcelain and vanish down the drain.

Eventually, the water runs clear and I breathe a sigh of relief. I don't even want to look at the cuts as I pat myself dry with a towel, holding my arm out in front of me while I walk to the dressing room and rummage in the drawers of the dressing table for some fresh bandages. They're cool when I wrap them around my stinging skin, masking the evidence. Suddenly exhausted, I step back into the main bedroom and collapse onto my bed, staring up at the ceiling until my eyes drift close and I plummet into darkness.


	39. Chapter 38

It's not long before the fate of the missing razor is discovered.

I awake to Haymitch at my door, handing me a few rounds of toast and guiding me through the mansion and the underground network maze to the hospital below the training centre. The doctor, a tall, thin woman with candyfloss pink hair, makes me sit on a stiff bed and peels my sweaty shirt from my back.

Her voice is high, still affected with the Capitol accent. "We're just going to see how your burns are healing up, and whether we're good to keep the bandages off all the time now, okay?" Her hands are cold as she starts to unravel the bandages, beginning with the ones on my back. She unravels them and throws the old cloth in a bin in the corner, running her icy fingers over my skin as Haymitch watches, like a protective father. "That's pretty much all healed there…" She holds up a mirror and I turn my head so I can see my scars reflected. White and wrinkled, bumpy and rough but no longer painful.

"You took more of an impact to your arms, of course, so I don't expect them to have healed quite so well just yet. Still, your dressings need changing." I give her a fed-up look as she continues to narrate her thoughts, unwrapping my right arm and stroking her fingers across the hot, red skin of my hands and arm, and the just-healing welts around my wrist.

I suddenly realise what she's going to find on my other arm. Beads of sweat form on my forehead and start to drip down my face. Oh no… no she can't… no! I hold my other arm close to my chest, spinning on the mattress to keep her from touching me. "Get off!" I shout, kicking out at her with my feet. Haymitch presses his fist into his forehead, scrunching his eyes up in frustration.

"For crying out loud Peeta let her do this one, you're not going to get better if you keep refusing help when someone offers it to you!" He snaps his mouth shut like he's said too much, like he's just discovered the secret to my character.

"I don't need anyone's help!" I shout, trembling. Something jabs me in the arm and I stop thrashing about, stop panicking and sit perfectly still, frozen in place.

The doctor comes around to the front of me, twisting my body and manipulating me so that I'm sitting properly on the bed. "Don't worry; it's just to keep you still." But now I can't move away, I can't stop her as she peels back the layers of bandage. After one layer, the cloth turns red and she glances up at me in question. Unable to react, all I can do it sit here, questions and panic flowing freely in my mind.

Haymitch looks at me, his eyes narrowed in confusion. As the doctor peels away the last layer of bandages and the cuts are revealed, he kicks the wall and storms from the room in anger. "Peeta?" The doctor says, removing whatever is stuck in my arm and holding my hands in front of me. "Do you want to tell me what these are?" Surely she knows… she must realise, must understand. "Okay, so you won't talk to me. Look, I know what you've done, but I also know that you're not allowed blades- for this very reason. We can get you help, you know." I shake my head, my lips pressed in a line. I don't _need_ your help. I don't _want _your pity.

"Here." Haymitch swings back into the room, holding the razor in his hand. It's started to rust from spending all night in the sink. There's still spots of blood on the handle. "Seriously kid? You think you can just hurt yourself and all your problems will vanish? You're wrong, okay? Your problems are in the real world, and like it or lump it you're going to have to suck it up and deal with them, okay?"

"What, like you did?" I scream out, betrayal burning in my eyes, venom hissing in my voice. "Yeah, drinking yourself stupid every waking minute, that's really dealing with your problems, isn't it Haymitch? Just… sitting back and letting your tributes die. And then along came me and Katniss- a pair of fighters. Sure, you sobered up just long enough to help us win but look at you now! You're drunk right this minute; I can see it in you. You know what drink does. You're hurting yourself, so why can't I have the same freedom? It's my body, you know!" My throat is raw as I stop, looking down at the floor in shame. "I just don't want to do this anymore." I'm defeated, they've won.

I've let everyone down. I've let down Haymitch- I can see that in his eyes. I've let down Katniss- I don't know where she is and they won't let me see her. Most of all I've let down Annie. I told her we could fight this together and… I've let reality grab me by the shoulders and throw me to the ground.

I'm a failure.

With fresh white bandages covering my arms and a clean t-shirt on my back, I'm guided through the hospital and back up to my room in the mansion. Instead of shoving me inside and leaving me to it like he usually does, Haymitch comes in with me and makes me sit down. He grabs a glass from my bedside table and takes it into the bathroom, coming back into my room with a cup full of cool water. He puts it in my hands and sits next to me on the bed as I take small sips to soothe my throat.

"Why, Peeta?" His voice is softer than I've ever heard it, his words more kind and comforting than I've ever heard leave his mouth.

I shrug, shaking my head and gripping the empty glass tight with both hands. "I just…" I bite my lip again and shake my head. "I've let everyone down."

Haymitch puts his hand on my shoulder and I raise my head to look at him. His grey eyes are full of sadness, his thin lips pressed together in a straight line. "You've been through a lot, right? This place… holds memories for you that you don't want to even contemplate, I get that. But you have a whole life ahead of you, okay. Panem has changed these past months. Who knows what the future holds for us?" He takes the glass from my hands and puts it back on the bedside table, shrugging his jacket off his shoulders and laying it on the bed behind us.

"You don't need this, okay kid? Don't put yourself through the same thing I've been through. I can tell you now this life is crap, and I'll be honest in telling you that it doesn't get any easier." He rolls up the sleeves of his long-sleeved shirt to reveal his forearms, yellowed with alcoholism. He turns them over to reveal the insides of his forearms, latticed with thin scars that I didn't notice when I bathed him before the first games. Some of the scars have long since faded, but others are red, fresh.

"Haymitch… I…" I'm shaking, staring down at his arms as he rolls his sleeves down over them again.

"Save it for another day. This won't help you, alright? Someone's gonna come up here to speak to you every day- he used to work with Katniss and he's a nice guy so give him a chance. Talk to him about anything you want or nothing at all- just don't let these," and he taps my forearm, indicating the scars, "take hold of this." He taps my head, then ruffles his fingers in my hair and pushes himself to his feet, exhaling deeply as he crosses the room, almost silently shutting the door behind him as he leaves.


	40. Chapter 39

It's another week before I see Haymitch. Dr Aurelius is in my room every day. Sometimes we talk, sometimes he naps while I paint my thoughts on canvases or scraps of paper for him to look at later. We become close friends, understanding each other, and finally he convinces me that I don't need to hurt myself anymore; that other people have hurt me enough and it's time for me to live my life.

Haymitch swaggers into my room, sober and well-dressed, and puts his hands on my shoulders. "Katniss' trial is over. Her mother isn't coming back to 12 so I've got to go with her, to keep an eye on her or whatever. Perhaps you can come join us in a few weeks." He sends a pointed look over at Dr Aurelius, but he's asleep in the armchair by the window. "I'll uhm, ring him up later and see what he says." He stands awkwardly in front of me, one hand in his pocket and the other on my shoulder. He lets the one on my shoulder fall to his side, where it swings loosely for a moment before he brings it up to rub his eyes. "I'll see you in a few weeks, kid." He raises his hand in farewell, turning to leave the Capitol once more.

Dr Aurelius continues to speak to me, asking me what I want to do at the end of next week, when I'm allowed to go home. "I want to see Katniss again." Because didn't I promise that I wouldn't let her go? And I won't. I'll do it for her. I'll get strong again, in my head, and I'll go home and we can live together. We can be together again.

The end of the week comes almost too fast, rushing up and slapping me in the face like a wave of cold water. Finally, I can go home. I've not seen 12 in… what, a year now? Not really. Dr Aurelius drives me to the train station, and then shakes my hand as I board a high-speed train on the line used by the rebel army to reach the Capitol. Quicker, more direct, straight across the country. The train line used by each of the districts to reach the Capitol for the Games.

"Peeta." His voice calls after me before the door of the train closes. "Tell Katniss to phone me. I can't keep pretending to treat her if she won't talk to me. Please."

I nod and step back, allowing the door to close. As the train starts to move from the station, I wave back at him as he and the Capitol vanish behind me forever. The brightly coloured buildings, the sheets of reflective glass. All masking the bloody, violent and just plain _wrong_ core of Panem's old ideals. All vanishing into the distance, so that I never have to deal with it again.

There's a bunch of refugees on the train, sitting in the plush chairs that stretch down each of the carriages. Most of them were rebel soldiers, now being taken back to their respective or in some cases- chosen- districts. Some of them I vaguely recognise, either from the war or from 12. It doesn't matter now. We're all veterans. We're all survivors.

It's morning when I arrive back in 12. The streets are near-empty, the occasional soul sweeping ashes from the roads and one or two other people gathering debris in wheelbarrows. I drop off my backpack of feeble belongings in my house in the Victor's village, then pull on a coat and head into the woods. Though not worn for over a year, the coat still holds the familiar smell of 12, with nothing of the ashes or the smoke that fills the air today. It's nice. It's home.

When I step beyond the fence and into the woods, I'm overwhelmed by the sudden cool darkness the trees provide. The musty smell of nature rises up, flowing into my nose with every step I take through the woods. It's nothing like the first arena in here. Rabbits and mice scurry along at my feet, snakes hang from branches like vines. Even in the early spring, this place is swarming with life. You know, instead of being a blood-soaked constant death trap.

I come across a shallow pond and stand by its edge. Was this where Katniss used to fish? Is this where she used to hunt? A tiny fish wiggles below the shimmering surface of the water, digging down into the soft mud beneath and then rising up for air, before swimming off into the murky depths.

When I look up, I see the familiar shape of a tracker-jacker nest hanging above my head. Just as I turn to start walking back to the district- back to the safety of the meadow, at least- I spot them out of the corner of my eye. Primroses.

My hands sting as I dig in the ground, ripping up the plants and tucking them under my arm. With five plants in my grasp, I start the trek back through the woods to the edge of the district. The remaining residents of 12- those who had escaped to 13- have returned. Some are building new houses where the Seam used to be. Some are digging a huge hole in the meadow, a mass grave for the thousands of citizens who didn't make it. Somewhere around here are the bones of my mother, my father, my brothers.

I try not to think about it.

Back at my house, I rest the flowers on the kitchen table and run through the empty building to the garden at the back. The grass is overgrown and up to my knees, damp with dew as I push my way through it to the small shed at the end of a vague path through the weeds. I manage to find a wheelbarrow and a shovel, and manoeuvre them back through the house to the kitchen. Placing the plants in the wheel barrow, I head out through the front door and around to the front of Katniss' house.

I plunge the shovel into the hard earth outside Katniss' front door and with every movement of the blade I hear her name. Every scraping of the metal against dirt and stone whispers her name in a rhythmic hiss. _Katniss. Katniss. Katniss._

Halfway along the narrow strip of land, the wide front door swings open and there she stands, lanky and taller looking, her hair dangling in straggly damp curtains at the side of her face. Her shoulders are draped with a soft pink blanket, smudged with patches of much and splashes of tea. Red marks circle her eyes like she's been crying, coupled with the dry and swollen lips of someone who's not completely okay with remembering how to keep herself alive. She looks down at the trench I'm digging then over at my wheelbarrow, then down at the heavy shovel in my brown hands.

"What are you doing?" Her voice cracks as she shifts awkwardly on her feet, her bony ankles sticking out from the bottom of her blanket. She looks a mess, but she's my mess. She's still my mockingjay.

"I… Primroses. I found them in the woods… and I thought you might like them." She rubs her eyes with a scrunched up fist, her fingernails thick and caked with blood and dirt. With her eyes red and wide, she looks again at the wheelbarrow then up at me.

"When did you get here? How long have you been here?" She shifts on her feet again and coughs lightly into her still-raised fist, her face scrunching up in pain.

"They let me come home yesterday… I got back this morning." I'm about to ask if she's okay when she nods in understanding and turns back inside, the blanket trailing after her. The heavy door swings shut with a dull thump and I'm alone again outside. Without dwelling too much on what just happened, I get back to work and within two hours I'm done. The five primrose plants look bedraggled and half of the stems are snapped, but they're firmly in the ground.

Just like me. My hair is everywhere, my mind is all over the place and I'm broken inside and out- but I'm here. Right here and right now. And that's all that matters.

I hear screaming from inside the house, Katniss' anguished cries echoing through the empty rooms. I push open the door, wiping my muddy hands on my trousers, and rush into the kitchen where she's lying in a crumpled heap on the floor. A pool of tears slowly spreads beneath her face, her features twisted into an ugly mask of grief. Buttercup lies curled into her stomach, his wide eyes looking up at me in sorrow. Of course- they finally have something in common.

I walk across the kitchen and through into the living room, and grab the blanket that's slung over the back of the armchair. I step back into the kitchen and wrap the soft fabric around Katniss's shaking shoulders, lifting her shivering body into my arms and holding her against me. It takes all the strength I have left in me to lift her frail body and stagger up the stairs until I collapse onto her bed, more emotionally exhausted than physically. I spread the blanket over her completely, lying beside her on top of the covers and stroking her hair until she falls asleep, then holding her close to me as the nightmares take over.

She sleeps fitfully until morning, when she rolls over and sees me lying there, tired and teary-eyed. She regards me with a puzzled look, then remembers the night before and blushes red with shame, yellow remnants of tears framing her eyes. Then, as if she knows she has nothing else to loose, she swoops down and kisses me right on the lips, with more passion than ever before. Her body presses against mine, her fingers raking through my hair as I kiss her back. She murmurs my name as she burrows her face into my shoulder, gripping onto my arms with thin fingers like she never, ever wants to let me go.


	41. Chapter 40

After this, she begins to come back to life. A couple of days she goes out hunting, only to be carried back exhausted an hour or so later by Thom or Greasy Sae. But on the days where she stays at home, she makes real progress. She answers the calls from Dr Aurelius and looks after Buttercup. I bring her bread and eat meals with her and Greasy Sae, stew and scrambled eggs and toast with marmalade. Katniss even tells Dr Aurelius about her idea with her book and he sends over a huge box of parchment from the Capitol. The idea is simple and stems from the idea of her father's book- with my help she will record the things that she never, ever wants to forget. That it's vital for her to remember.

First of all we stick a photo or I draw a sketch of the thing she wants to remember- an animal or an event or a person. And it helps me too- I draw my father with his flower cookies and Finnick with his flowing bronze hair and bright eyes. Haymitch joins us too- once the liquor runs out and he stops drinking himself stupid. He adds years and years of tributes that he was forced to mentor, kids that died as a result of his negligence and regrets that follow him around like ghosts- but the good bits too. The parts of each kid he'll never forget- their jokes or their looks or their humour. One day he even asks us to draw Effie and add her to the book- and we dedicate a whole page to her wigs. We preserve these memories with saltwater and promises to keep going, to make this people proud. Eventually we're adding less and less to the book until it's just a small memory here and there, a splash of happiness on the plain white page. We pick one of the primroses from the bushes in the garden and press it between the pages. Annie sends us a photo of her baby boy, so we stick that in there too, and eventually we all learn to get busy again. And whenever any of us feels ourselves slipping, we open up the book and run our eyes over our work, and together we make it through the days.

Over the next weeks, hundreds of people return from 13. Of course many chose to stay and it doesn't matter much to me anyway seeing as my entire family is dead and buried, but to many people District 12 is home. Everyone chips in- the houses get rebuilt and the land gets planted with rows of seeds that will grow into tomatoes and grapes.

As the District makes progress, so do we. I still have moments where I lose myself and claw at my forearms with my fingernails to try and bring myself back, or grip onto the back of the chair and wait for the episode to pass. Katniss still has moments where she just freezes and crumples to the ground, unable to keep moving. I'm still haunted by memories of the arena or the Capitol dungeons, or the knowledge that I'll never see my father again. Katniss still wakes screaming for her mother and Prim, is still haunted by mutts and Snow and explosions and fire.

Every night, we lie together in bed and stare up at the ceiling together until we fall asleep. Some nights we just lie in silence, our arms wrapped around eachother and our legs entwined beneath the covers. Other nights we talk about the book, discuss the happy memories. On tough nights we talk about the things that still scare us, work together to try and overcome the pain. After weeks of sleepless nights and being haunted by the nightmares, we seem to come to some mutual agreement that what we're doing is the right thing. I place each of my arms beside Katniss' head and lower my face over hers, closing my eyes and gently pressing my lips into hers. Our skin burns as we touch, our mouths moving together like a dance.

When we pull apart, she turns onto her side and we lie together, my hand resting on her hip as she strokes my thigh, the smallest of gaps separating our scorching bodies beneath the sheets. Thoughts whizz around my head in a blur, red thoughts of passion and love and fire and the future we could have together, the future we could form in the Panem that won't kill our kids.

"Katniss…" I run my hand over her ribs, over her shoulders and up her neck, and caress the back of her head as she gazes up into my face. My voice is a choked whisper when it leaves my lips, as though to break the silence would be to destroy everything we had formed. "You love me. Real or not real?"

She closes her eyes and swallows with a wince. I drop my hand- what have I done? I've spoilt everything. Oh no. No. No. My eyes follow her lips as they part and she shuffles her body closer to mine, wrapping both arms around my waist and bringing her mouth close to my ear. Her breath is like the wind created by flapping butterfly wings as she presses every inch of her body against mine.

And she gulps.

And she whispers.

"Real."


	42. Epilogue

It took years to persuade Katniss that Panem has changed- that it's a safe place to have a family now. It's not like I tried to force her into having sex with me. No. I'm not like that, never. But all through my life I've wanted a family, so I could show my mother how raising kids is done. You don't hit them or burn them or shout at them all the time, you don't abuse them and then maybe, just maybe they might actually love you. Of course other factors came into the argument- the fact that Panem's population had dwindled massively and the government were really trying to encourage large families to get it back up. Katniss being Katniss, though, she didn't listen to the government and refused to abide by their plans. When they stopped putting so much pressure on things, stopped trying to brainwash us- she finally agreed.

It was one night in early autumn. We'd gone to bed after working all day- by this point I'd re-opened the bakery and Katniss had continued to sell her game. It wasn't illegal to hunt anymore, of course, but she was still the best resource the district had and she'd been teaching a few of the men the tricks of the trade so they could feed their own families like she'd been doing for years. She lay down next to me and wrapped her arms around my waist, nuzzling her face into my neck. Her earthy scent filled the bedroom as she ran a calloused finger up and down my stomach, then listed her face and looked into mine with an expression of lust.

We both struggled, fear overwhelming us as we thought of what the future could hold, of the horrors of the past that one day our children would discover. Katniss' belly swelled as the months ticked past, and the restless child within began to kick and squirm. The following summer our baby girl was born, with a head of Katniss' thick dark hair and glistening eyes that mirrored my own. Our little boy came a few years later, with my blond curls and Katniss' grey eyes making him the complete opposite of his older sister. But both of them are beautiful, and both of them are strong.

I'm standing on the edge of the meadow with Katniss, her hand in mine, as we watch our children run over the grass and through knee high clusters of buttercups and dandelions. The Games are long over, of course, but the knowledge that our children play atop a mass grave sends shivers down my spine. My mother, my father and my brothers' bones lie crumbling in the gaping hole beneath their feet. The memorial- a pillar of polished stone sitting in a concrete circle in the centre of the meadow- lists their names. They learn about the Games in school- James is too young but Sophie has begun to learn about them and that we played a part- both in them and in bringing them down.

She's begun to ask questions- what they were like, exactly what we experienced, why people with cameras sometimes come to talk to us and we brush them aside. Haymitch wobbles up behind us as we stand there, and smiles proudly at the children he helped create- for without his efforts in keeping us alive they surely would not exist. He smiles, his sagging yellow skin crinkling around the eyes. It surprised me that he's still going, but he knows he's not long for this world. He's still looking out for us though, after all this time.

I live in dread of the day when we- Katniss and I, and maybe Haymitch, if he's still around- will have to sit our children down and talk about our experiences. The day when I'll have to explain the story behind my leg, behind each of my scars. Explain the nightmares and the terrors that haunt both me and Katniss to this day, and how we overcome them. Of course we have the book; soft and yellowed with age and gathering dust on the shelf.

There's one part of the future I look forward to though, more and more everyday. Telling them how Katniss and I came to be, telling them about Prim and Rue and Effie. Letting them in on those pockets of light that helped to make the dark more bearable.


	43. Author's Note

Well, this is it. After two years this story has drawn to a close and our time together is over. I'll still be uploading fanfiction of course, but the time has come to leave Mr Mellark behind and move onwards, into the great unknown.

There's a few people I'd like to thank here- that deserve a spot right in the heart of this story. Firstly, I'd like to thank Selande. You beautiful human being. I have lost count of the amount of times I have awoken to a new review from you and cried, because the things I wrote seemed to make you so happy. You really helped me through thick and thin- I'd ask you for advice and what you'd like to see next because at the end of it all, it was for you. You asked me to continue writing this so I did, and now we're here. I'd also like to thank AuslinAzure, daydreamer626, firefoxxe, say it straight, Lightning and Blossoms, Automber, and I-am-a-firefly. Your reviews truly meant the world to me- your feedback and your comments drove me forwards and for that, I thank you. In addition to this I'd also like to thank everyone who reviewed as a guest. I can't thank you by name, but your comments mean just as much to me as any other.

Everyone who followed or favourited this story... you too inspired me to keep going. I really faced some difficult times in this fic and considered packing it in altogether, but it's the thought that you were there waiting for me that made me come back. get down to business and finish it.

Last of all, I'd like to thank **you**. Regardless of if you've already been mentioned, you deserve this one too. Because if you're reading this note, I assume you've already read the whole (or most of) the fic itself. And for someone to have the patience, the willpower and the sheer ability to go through and read all 55,000 of those words, my incessant rambling and then make the effort to review it or to come here and read through this thing too... you deserve an award. A spanking great gold medal with your name engraved on the back, and a trophy to match.

Live long and prosper.


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